The Business of America...
California Newsreel's latest production, an exploration of steelworkers and the steel industry, is called by historian Michael Harrington “a forceful and convincing analysis--in haunting images.” Companies like U.S. Steel no longer provide Americans with the economic opportunities they have come to expect; contrasting the individual worker's faith in private enterprise with the actual plans and priorities of U.S. Steel, The Business of America... attempts to explain why. The film offers the views of workers, community leaders, business executives and economists to confront a critical issue of the 1980s: can the traditional American business system reverse our industrial decline and provide for the economic and social needs of all Americans? “One of the most challenging, and strangely, most hopeful films in a decade” (Studs Terkel).
• Directed, Produced and Written by Lawrence Daressa, Larry Adelman and Bruce Schmiechen. (1984, 43 mins, Color, Print from California Newsreel)

Voices from a Steeltown
Documentary filmmaker Tony Buba has been chronicling the decline of his hometown of Braddock, Pennsylvania, for some 10 years. In his lastest film, Voices from a Steeltown, he allows the viewer to imagine the past through photos and the comments of Braddock's citizens, who have no illusions as to the reasons for the town's demise as an industrial (U.S. Steel) and retail center. “The overall tone of Voices from a Steeltown is spunky, not maudlin.... One man ventures the town was milked dry ‘like an old Jersey cow'....” (Jim Davidson, Pittsburgh Press).
• Directed by Tony Buba. Photographed by Dusty Nelson, Joe Seamans and Nick Mastandrea. (1983, 28 mins, Color, Print from filmmaker)

Valley Town
Willard Van Dyke's depiction of unemployed laborers in the steel industry is a classic study of the human consequences of automation, and remarkable for its photographic quality and its original music. “Van Dyke focused on the plight of one family and used a musical soliloquy composed by Marc Blitzstein to express their desolate humiliation and longing for escape. The aesthetic effects on the audience were as nothing compared with the impact on the sponsors....” (Paul Rotha).
• Directed by Willard Van Dyke. Produced by Educational Film Inst. of New York University and Documentary Film Productions, Inc. Photographed by Roger Barlow and Bob Churchill. Edited by Irving Lerner. Music by Marc Blitzstein. (1940, 25 mins, Print from Museum of Modern Art)