Oscars 2020: Chinese co-producers of American Factory lauded for getting Chinese workers, CEO to open up for documentary
- When a Chinese company revived a General Motors factory in the US in 2014, American filmmakers were given permission to document it
- They recruited Chinese co-producers to help get the perspectives of Chinese as well as American workers, and show their different work cultures
Back in 2014, Cao Dewang, founder and CEO of Fuyao, looked like a saviour to the people of Dayton, in the American state of Ohio. The Chinese billionaire and entrepreneur promised to bring an abandoned General Motors factory back to life, providing thousands of jobs to an area that desperately needed them.
Filmmakers Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert were there in 2008 to document the GM factory closing, and they returned in 2014 to make American Factory. They were given full access to the plant, which manufactured glass for the automotive industry, and its workers.
“Cao took a real leap of faith with us, and that took some nerve on his part,” Bognar tells the Post. “Things got hard and tough, but he never withdrew his permission.”
The filmmakers shot Cao and his management team in surprisingly unguarded moments, and captured the confusing, at times humorous culture clash between Chinese and American workers. Over a two-year period between 2015 and 2017, they also found striking moments of teamwork and unity, both in Ohio and at a Fuyao plant in Fujian province.