An indie film about manufacturing's decline and future gets a one-night screening in Royal Oak this week.

"American Made Movie" will be shown at the Landmark Main Art, 118 N. Main, at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 19. It includes local scenes and interviews.

Aug. 28 article:

A new documentary about a familiar saga, complete with Detroit factory ruins and a tired description ("post-apocalyptic"), gets its first public viewings Friday -- though not here yet.


This Packard plant shot is from the documentary opening Friday.

"American Made Movie," which explores the impact of domestic manufacturing's decline, has interviews with a local labor leader and a former steelworker. It lacks a national distributor, so just nine bookings are listed so far -- week-long and one-day screenings in Chicago, Pittsburgh, New York, Washington, Houston, Phoenix, Beverly Hills, suburban Milwaukee and Lawrenceville, Ga.

The 85-minute film spotlights "companies that have prospered without adopting the practices of their competitors," such as Viking Range of Greenwood, Miss., and New Balance of Boston.

The main local interviewee is Chris Michalakis of Southgate, 33-year-old president of the Metro Detroit AFL-CIO. The documentary was screened at the union's Detroit office July 19 during a promotional visit by co-director Vincent Vittorio, who spoke with Melody Baetens of The Detroit News:

“When talking about the history of manufacturing, you have to go to Detroit,” said Vittorio. “Chris . . . gave us a sense of the ripple effects [of decline] and how it affects all these other industries like education, local governments, suppliers. He has a good sense of understanding what happens.”


Union leader Chris Michilakis, a 2002 University of Michigan graduate, is interviewed in the movie.

In the film, Michalakis recalls Detroit’s manufacturing heyday, saying: “You weren’t just buying into the idea of working in a factory, you were buying into a piece of the American dream."

The filmmakers also spoke with Blue Wilson, a former worker at McLouth Steel in Trenton. 

Baetens, who attended the preview, writes that "American Made Movie" shows the former Packard plant and other vacant factories as a narrator asks: “How did a place like this end up looking like a post-apocalyptic ruin?”

Filmmakers juxtaposed abandoned factory shots with sad facts such as “in the last 10 years, Michigan has lost half of its manufacturing jobs” and “since 2001, 56,000 factories have shut down in the U.S.”

Here's a two-minute trailer: