The wave of deindustrialization that swept through the Great Lakes region of the United States in the latter half of the 20th century left in its wake what’s commonly referred to as the Rust Belt – a wide swath of shuttered factories and economic ruin stretching roughly from upstate New York to Wisconsin. The ramifications of this shift are palpable in local and national politics to this day, as evidenced by each election cycle’s inevitable scramble for the sympathies of the area’s supposedly lost and forgotten “white working class.” The saga of the Rust Belt is as American as they come – a story of the abandonment of the working class at the hands of the ruling class, of the ruthless march of time, and of ordinary citizens contending with major global political and economic currents in their own backyards.
This May, Spectacle is proud to present two films that blend truth and fiction in confronting the neoliberal economic order that created the Rust Belt (or, to use one of the film’s more Great Depression-coded moniker, the Rust Bowl) – legendary Pennsylvania indie filmmaker Tony Buba’s Lightning Over Braddock: A Rust Bowl Fantasy (1988) and the one-of-a-kind lost gem Dadetown (1995).
LIGHTNING OVER BRADDOCK: A RUST BOWL FANTASY
Dir. Tony Buba, 1988.
US. 80 min.
In English.
SATURDAY, MAY 2ND – 10PM
FRIDAY, MAY 15th – 7:30PM (Q&A with director Tony Buba)
TUESDAY, MAY 19th – 7:30PM (Q&A with director Tony Buba)
THURSDAY, MAY 28th – 10PM
After over a decade making short films addressing political issues in his native Braddock, PA, Tony Buba made his feature debut with this freewheeling, diaristic first-person documentary about the economic decline of his hometown following the collapse of the steel industry in Western Pennsylvania.
From this starting point, Buba creates a brilliantly funny and impassioned reflection on the relationship between labor and capital, whether in manufacturing or the movie business. As much a story of an independent filmmaker negotiating his career as that of a town fighting for its future, Buba’s dry humor, candid self-reflection and flair for imagination (including parodies of major Hollywood films) exist alongside a lucid anger at the capitalist forces waging war on Braddock’s working people.
On May 15th and May 19th, we’ll be joined by Tony Buba for a Q&A about the film.
DADETOWN
Dir. Russ Hexter, 1995.
US. 93 min.
In English.
WEDNESDAY, MAY 13 – 10PM
FRIDAY, MAY 22 – 7:30PM (Q&A with co-writer John Housley)
SATURDAY, MAY 30 – 10PM
“We arrived in late March, 1994 to film a simple 15-minute segment for a public television special about small towns in America. Although we were only hired to stay for two weeks, our plans would change.”
So begins the story of Dadetown, which follows its titular upstate New York town through a fraught moment of post-industrial transformation. As the paper clip factory that has long served as the town’s chief employer begins closing, a hi-tech computer company called American Peripheral Imaging sets its sights on Dadetown as the location for its newest expansion. The arrival of API (and the legions of yuppie arrivistes they bring with them) exposes deep fault lines in the community, largely between those who stand to gain from the infusion of big business and those who may be left by the wayside.
Director Russ Hexter (who tragically died at age 27 shortly after the film’s Sundance premiere) captures the nuances and absurdities of this escalating conflict through candid interviews with the townsfolk and the API interlopers, invoking both the power and the challenges of working-class solidarity in its tight-knit community. Long before our current firestorms around tariffs and data centers, Dadetown asks urgent questions about labor, tech and capital that we’re still wrestling with to this day.
On May 22nd, we’ll be joined by co-writer John Housley for a Q&A about the film.
Special thanks to John Housley, Jim Carden and Maren Hexter.