This year’s rendition of the internationally watched film festival launches Thursday in Park City, Utah.
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According to the Sundance Institute’s web site, the 115-minute film “American Factory” will be shown for the first time at Prospector Square Theater in Park City at 5:30 p.m. Friday. No tickets are available for that first screening, according to the web site.
The creation of a major Chinese-owned manufacturing operation in the U.S. heartland has been watched the world over, and this documentary taps into that.
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Cho Tak Wong, the Chinese billionaire who founded the global Fuyao Group, bought a shuttered General Motors plant between Ohio 741 and Kettering Boulevard in May 2014 for $15 million, creating what Fuyao says today is the world’s largest standalone automotive windshield and glass set factory.
“With precision and astonishing access, directors Julia Reichert and Steven Bognar capture every key moment in this high-stakes intercultural chess game, revealing how American and Chinese workers view themselves within systems of authority,” the Sundance description of the film says. “What results is an epic masterwork about the future of American labor and Chinese economic dominance, all within the confines of a factory in Ohio.”
Bognar and Reichert may be best known in the Dayton area for what might be considered this film’s predecessor, “The Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant.”
That movie was picked up by HBO Films and aired to wide acclaim in 2009. Reichert and Bognar followed the workers at GM’s SUV assembly plant in Moraine as the automaker announced plans to close the plant in 2008.
The Last Truck was nominated for the Academy Award for “Best Documentary (short subject).” Another work, Music by Prudence, was the winner in the 2010 Academy Awards.
Bognar and Reichert are hoping the Sundance spotlight will help the new film get attention from distributors and buyers.
“Sundance is the greatest launching pad,” the Associated Press quoted Reichert as saying in a story Monday. “I can’t think of another festival that shows fiction and documentaries that puts as much honor, respect and spotlight on the documentary.”
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