Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #56552 in VHS
• Released on: 1987-10-21
• Rating: Unrated
• Formats: Color, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of tapes: 1
• Running time: 57 minutes

Customer Reviews

A Twenty Five Year Old Wake Up Call
Actress/director Lee Grant produced, directed and narrated this Academy Award documentary in 1985. It's a sobering look at the nouveaux-pauvres of the 1980s in both urban and rural America. Much attention is given to the Mid-Western farm crisis of the era and the dislocation that engendered. There is also a good deal of focus on emerging "welfare hotel industry" of the era.

Since the focus is on individuals and their stories, the movie comes off as less of a criticism of the policies of any one administration (although this IS the Eighties, we're talking about) and more of portrait of people dealing with crises brought on, for the most part, by social and historical forces beyond their control. Twenty four years later, you can't help wonder what became of these people. Did the struggling farmers manage to keep their farms? Did they migrate to the cities--for good or for ill. And what about the young couple in the New York, burned out of their home and living in two rooms in a crumbling welfare hotel? Their three children would now be about the ages they were in the film. What has life brought them?

Food for thought from an economic downturn a quarter of a century ago. It's only getting grimmer out there, folks.