Taylor Chain
Thematic Program

Running Time:
33 minutes
Screening Info:
Friday, April 9
10:20 pm
Cinema Four
Director(s):
Jerry Blumenthal, Gordon Quinn
Producer(s):
Jerry Blumenthal, Gordon Quinn
Editor(s):
Jerry Blumenthal
Cinematographer(s):
Gordon Quinn
Release Year:
1973
Country:
US

Taylor Chain chronicles the seven-week strike of the family-owned Taylor Chain company in Indiana in the 1970s. The striking 16mm footage, which is nearly as tactile and gritty as the strike itself, captures picket-line confrontations, large, tumultuous union meetings, and fraught negotiations between union representatives and company executives. Tensions run high within the union itself as well at the negotiating table. As with all movements, there are cracks at the seams of this one, but this remarkable inside view of a union in action reminds us of what the workers at Taylor Chain already know: only together can they really make a difference. The film also preserves a slice of industrial American life that would otherwise be lost—the Taylor Chain plant eventually closed in the 1980s, when the shift away from manufacturing industries toward technology and service industries profoundly altered the landscape for American labor.  ST