Movies

...Joan Harvey assumed directorship of the project (it was the first venture into filmmaking for this experienced stage director), and Tom Hurwitz (whose credits include work in Harlan County and Alambrista...

...Veterinarians speak of dying livestock and an unprecedented number of still-born calves in the months following the disaster...

...Michael H. Seitz teaches film at Rutgers University and reviews films regularly for The Progressive...

...The problems of financing are horrendous, even for relatively low-budget productions, and those of distribution are no less daunting...

...It was unusually well shot (with the camera generally approximating the point of view of an only slightly removed participant), and was edited with crispness and economy...

...Richard Vollmer of the NRC, the film's principal apologist for national nuclear policy, speaks of "acceptable limits" of toxic radiation and uses "cost-benefit" considerations to justify the release of contaminated gases into the air and contaminated water into the Susquehanna River...

...Subsequent interviews were held and footage shot in Washington, New York, and Pittsburgh...

...And we also get a sense of the powerful economic forces which inhibit full revelation of the damage caused by the "accident...

...You just can't see it...

...In a meeting during the fifth week of the strike, the staff representative advises the local rank and file to accept terms which still fall far short of their demands, but which are, he says, the best they can get...

...We Are the Guinea Pigs is essentially a work of "direct cinema," which investigates its subject through interviews with residents of the Harrisburg area (farmers, union leaders, doctors, veterinarians), and representatives of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and state and local government-—all of this intercut with interviews and commentary from scientific and medical experts...

...The film provides an inside view of union meetings, and lets us witness informal discussions among the workers in the union hall and the picket line...

...In May 1979, several members of this group decided to make a film examining the causes and effects of the Three Mile Island disaster in March...

...Local physicians speak of the symptoms of radiation sickness exhibited by their patients, and of enduring deposits of toxic radiation revealed by body scans...

...This is their first serious effort in collective bargaining, and their first strike...

...The workers, it's clear, don't trust this representative from their parent union—his income and personal integrity are not at stake—and a number of them argue heatedly against an immediate settlement...

...As a result of this artistic discretion, the film has an extraordinary feeling of authenticity...

...We Are the Guinea Pigs is a color feature produced and distributed by Parallel Films as a project of an environmental study and research group formed by a number of concerned New Yorkers...

...But because of other priorities and a lack of funding, post-production work on the film was not completed until 1980, with the help of a small grant from the Film Fund, and more substantial aid from the Independent Documentary Fund at WNET, New York...

...the filmmakers allow it to unfold unburdened by any supplementary polemics or editorializing...

...Total production costs ran to $250,000, the greater part of which was raised through personal loans and many small contributions—as well as through the donation of some $90,000 in free labor...

...The film will be broadcast on PBS's "Independent Focus" on Sunday, May 10, and Thursday, May 14...

...We Are the Guinea Pigs deals with one of the most deadly issues of our time, and it does so in a manner that is informative, penetrating, and, on occasion, emotionally affecting...

...We see them acquiring, on the one hand, a sense of what they may gain by standing together and, on the other, a growing awareness that the company isn't likely to meet all their demands, so that they'll eventually have to settle for something less than what they originally had hoped for...

...Unlike We Are the Guinea Pigs, this is a most fascinating film to watch...

...We see and hear many area residents expressing their confusion, fear (for their children and for themselves), and a sense of betrayal ("We didn't know just how serious this thing was," one man declares—"that we were sitting on a powder keg...

...One of the film's most affecting images is of a cow struggling unsuccessfully to rise to its feet...

...And, although the filmmakers could hardly have foreseen it when the project was begun, the story they document contains no small amount of dramatic tension...

...It is an unfamiliar process to the workers and their local leaders, who had only gained union recognition five years earlier...

...Workers and unions have not been well represented in American motion pictures...

...The filmmakers have done their homework and intelligently marshal a complex of factual materials...

...Taylor Chain concentrates on the process by which the union members, with the advice of their elected officers and a staff representative from the international union, attempt to arrive at a consensus on acceptable contract terms...

...Guinea Pigs is, for the most part, a film of "talking heads," in which the visual image only rarely contributes to the meaning...

...The problem, I think, lies at least partly in the subject itself...

...Those rare films which deal with labor generally focus on the high drama of union organizing (Norma Rae), or on the equally high drama of corrupt union leaders selling out to management or to the Mob, and thus betraying the interests of the workers who elected them (F.I.S...

...We Are the Guinea Pigs is, nonetheless, a work of superlative reporting, which provides much enlightenment on an issue that must be more broadly understood if there is ever to be an effective mass movement in opposition to the development of nuclear power...

...At a time of widespread cynicism about organized labor, Taylor Chain reminds us that unions can be democratic, and can provide indispensable protection to workers...

...served as cin-ematographer...

...Yet despite their achievements, they have not made a moving picture which is especially interesting to look at...

...They continued shooting throughout what proved to be a seven-week walkout...

...The film shows how the accident and the way the Government handled it affected inhabitants of the Three Mile Island area...

...By July, sufficient funds were raised to dispatch a crew for nine days of location shooting in the Harrisburg area...

...And it presents a national nuclear policy which is callously unconcerned with the most vital inter-, ests and well-being of American citizens...

...The invisibility of the effects of toxic radiation creates terrible frustrations: for filmmakers, for the victims of nuclear contamination, and for those seeking to alert the public to this danger...

...More than thirty hours of film were eventually edited to produce a work with a running time of ninety minutes...

...The union remains on strike, and two weeks later, in another emotionally charged meeting, a better contract agreement, this time recommended by the local leadership, is approved...

...Taylor Chain was co-produced and directed by Jerry Blumenthal and Gordon Quinn of Kartemquin Films, a Chicago-based collective that has been making films on social issues arising out of the local community since the late 1960s...

...Dairy farmers are afraid to speak up, one of the more daring of them declares, for fear that they will be cut off by the big milk companies...

...In 1972, Blumenthal and Quinn were part of a group advising United Steelworkers Local 4041, made up of workers at the Taylor chain-making plant in Hammond, Indiana, on health and safety issues...

...When the company fell far short of meeting initial union demands for a new contract, the workers voted to go on strike, and the filmmakers, who had participated in the conflict from the start, began filming...

...One Harrisburg resident laments, "This disaster is not like a flood or fire...

...Its makers were less interested in telling a story than in representing how a union functions—in itself, an interesting process...

...Yet there is a lively and prolific independent film movement in America, more highly regarded abroad than at home, producing works which are among the most searching, uncompromising motion pictures being made these days...

...This is the local union's story...

...T., Blue Collar...

...The filmmakers' application for a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts was turned down, but they received some indirect aid from the Film Fund...

...The filmmakers, moreover, never appear to intrude upon their subject: We see the union members interacting with each other, not responding to an interviewer or performing selfconsciously before the camera...

...Vollmer represents national policy characterized by duplicity, incompetence, and appalling disregard for the welfare of individual Americans...

...Taylor Chain, a half-hour black-and-white documentary, is a welcome exception—a relatively modest film that depicts the process of democratic decision making within a small union local engaged in contract negotiations...

...The film condemns that policy and those corporate interests which are profiting from the development of nuclear energy at the expense of public safety, and concludes by persuasively establishing a connection between nuclear power and the arms race...

...His bland assurances are constantly contradicted by the medical and scientific evidence of independent authorities...