- [Commentator] As secretary, you need to be the best you can be.

This group of women whose voice was not being heard, there's something you can do about it.

Everything exploded.

(upbeat music) The movie, was married to a movement.

(upbeat music) They built their own kinda feminism and it was powerful.

I'm not just the secretary, I'm a secretary.

(upbeat music) - I would introduce them to you but as David Letterman would say, they need no introduction, they're well-known in Southwest Ohio, Julia Reichert and Steve Bogner, are winners of the Oscar.

You didn't bring the Oscar, you should've brought it and put it right there, but that's okay, but you're the last ones, right?

- Yeah.

- To win the Oscar.

- Yeah, we are lucky to be the most recent.

- Yeah.

- That's an year ago.

A year ago.

- Okay, so 40 years ago, if you would ask somebody, what came first?

They would probably say, oh yeah, well I think Dolly Parton did the song and that led to the movie and that led to the labor movement.

But in reality, - It's the exact opposite of that, it's the exact opposite of that.

And, that's one of the surprises I think when you see the, our film 9 to 5 the Story of a Movement.

Yeah, there had been a movement, of clerical workers and uprising, like a Prairie fire all across the country, throughout the 70s, mid to late seventies.

Jane Fonda heard about it and Jane Fonda being Jane Fonda, you know, she loves to make movies that somehow connect to things going on in the, in the society we all know that.

She heard about this, she thought, this is outrageous, we ought to make a movie about it.

And so she pulled together a cast, which in, very smart casting, she cast Dolly Parton as one of the secretaries and of course Lily Tomlin, those are the three.

So one day, as it's holding the film, you'll actually see the shot of it.

Dolly Parton shows up on set, with her guitar.

- Oh, I did this little song.

- And I wrote a song y'all and she starts, actually, yeah, she starts playing it on her fingernails.

- As a washboard.

- 'Cause she has a long fingernails and she wrote the song, Working 9 to 5.

Did we hear it already?

- Yes, he did.

- Okay, it's like the working woman's anthem, right?

even now.

- So, you know, I think a lot of people think that filmmakers like you would have a project, work on that project, get it done, screen it go onto the next thing, you guys can have two or three projects going on at once.

How long did this particular project go on?

And what was the genesis about the whole thing?

- Well, that's a little bit wrong, we were making this film, we started it actually nine years ago, nine years ago like way before me to, way before time's up way so many things.

So, we started the film, we knew it was gonna be, you know, it's an archival film, it's, it's history, it's talking to people, get it, it's finding the history, there's no book about 9 to 5 right?

We had to discover it, it's like original research.

So we're going along, you know, year by year and all of a sudden, we found out that the General Motors Plant here in Dayton, was bought by a Chinese billionaire, and one thing led to another and pretty soon we're on a runaway train, that became American factory.

And as our editor, Jamie knows who was editing 9 to 5 and she's here in Cincinnati, Jamie, Jamie Myers.

She knows, we had to kinda of put 9 to 5 on the background.

- Right.

- On the back burner, while the runaway train of American factory took over our lives.

I mean, we kept working on it and luckily there was so much material, that Jamie just a beautiful job of just calling through everything and picking the archival, and the interviews.

No, we do not like.

- We don't advise it.

- We do not advise it nor do we like having more than one project at once, it drives you nuts.

- Yeah, but take this film, one reason it took so many years is because of the digging, you know, the sifting and the digging and it was a dialogue between finding people, you know, we find someone in Cleveland and they, she says to us, you know, who you really should interview is person, this person who's now in San Francisco.

And then that person in San Francisco says, you know, but you gotta go to Seattle because Laurie in Seattle, that's who you really want to talk to.

And then the archival research, also took forever, we dug and dug, not just in the National Archive or the usual places but like local TV channels in Cleveland, Atlanta, Seattle other places digging and digging after a long time.

- And this, and this was very different from, you know, lying in the house, it was really kind of a cinema verite and you are really stuck, you know, hanging out in the hospital, getting as much footage being flies on the wall, to see what's going on.

This one just really required a lot of original research a lot of reporting.

- Yeah.

- It's only totally different approaches to film which we love both.

- Yeah.

- One is the Verite like American factory the last truck line in the house, but Union made, Seeing red and this film are history films, you know, where you sit down like we are and you talk for hours, you know, trying to unearth people's memories really, so anyway yeah.

- And we believe in building a small but, like crucial team and we had a leader archival researcher, Crystal Whetstone.

When she started working with us, she was like a master's candidate at Wright State and she now has her PhD, this is how long it took to make the movie.

She now is like a professor with a PhD, but Christa was essential in Cincinnati, Melissa Doyle line producer, who's been our line producer on a Lion In The House, the Last Truck, American Factory, wonderful filmmaker in Cincinnati.

She did all the local TV channels, you know, I've, you know, channel 12, channel 5, channel 9, going to their archives and that's in the scene that we'll maybe we'll see later, she found that footage of the striking in Cincinnati and that, that's all crucial to the process.

- I mean, I have one more question for you then we're gonna go to the viewer questions.

But that is when you start with a story, do you first do sort of a feasibility study to say are the visuals there?

Or do you just say, I'm doing this story and the visuals I'm gonna hunt them down no matter where they are.

- Oh yeah, it was the second.

- Okay.

- We had no idea, if there would be visuals at all, like after all this is women, right?

Like who's going around filming women on a picket line.

No it's women, it's local you know, it's Cleveland, Cincinnati, Seattle, it's not like big national news.

One time, it made Walter Cronkite and that's in the film.

But actually Steve is right, we had to go to local TV stations, and see if they had anything left or see if like some archive somewhere, like some college, had an archive that was donated to them.

It was painstaking, but it was exciting.

- I would think.

- But I do wanna say one thing, we don't necessarily do a feasibility study to say is there enough archival footage?

But we do ask ourselves and this we learned from another filmmaker years ago are there enough story events or story beats or turning points, whatever, however you wanna call it to make a real film?

And this is big advice for any filmmaker.

We have seen a lot of filmmakers who have a wonderful short film on their hands, but they wanna stretch it to a feature just to, so they can say they made a feature, with 9 to 5, when we started this movie, we thought it might be a short, and then we found all these story beats and it became a feature organically but you gotta be tough on yourself and say, are there really enough turning points to make it a feat.

- Okay, and I would argue that local stations would do stories about this but in a totally dismissive way the girls are out on the picket line now.

- And you got it.

- Yeah.

- So, we have a question from Harold in Cincinnati who wants to know, how does the situation today for working women differ, from that at the time that 9 to 5 the original 9 to 5 was filmed.

- Yeah, you mean the Jane Fonda?

Or just mean 9 to 5 the movement was active?

- Yeah.

- well, I can mention a few things, we still don't have equal pay, back then it was 59 cents to the dollar now it's i believe 79 to 80 cents to the dollar of, for white women anyway.

But, if your boss, pinches your ass, or makes a pass at you, you can sue them, I mean you can legally attack them.

Now that was not true back then, so that's a gain.

I mean, women have together organized and fought for certain changes, which have, which are great.

But, the 9 to 5 women were the low wage people of their day, they were the workers who weren't really considered workers, they're just working for pin money till they get married.

You know, and they don't, it's not really, they're not really workers.

Who are the low wage workers of today?

You know, the fast food workers?

The hospital cleaners?

You know, the domestic workers?

They're women and they're not really looked upon as people who deserve, a living wage, a life.

So yes, things have gotten better for sure but there's a long way to go.

- Yeah, mostly on the sexual harassment front pay not so much.

Laurie, Cincinnati, who did the interviews with the women in the film, we hear female voice sometimes can be heard off camera asking a question.

Was that Julia Reichert or producer Melissa Godoy?

- That was me.

- That was you generally do the interview, right?

- I do them all, yeah.

- Okay.

Do you ever switch off, do you ever run camera?

- No, well Steve shoots, Steve will always throw in questions but for seeing red, all these films, union maids, you know all these films, I'm the one looking at the person and sitting very close to the person.

Usually I sit, usually my knees are almost touching the other person's knees.

- Yeah, Pre COVID of course, yeah.

- Yeah and Steve's behind the camera.

- One of Julia's gifts is to, is your ability, I think to build a connection with a person in a short time, and you know what this is something, well, here's an example, you know, these are images of interviews we did.

So right here, Julia is in the foreground and Mary Jung, who's one of the stars of the movie.

You can see how close they are, their knees are practically bumping and that's an interview set up.

The microphone's really close, the bounce cards really close - Do we have any more shots like that or you can... - Well I wanna go back to the previous shot, so here's Julia and Renee Clay again see how close they are, and Brittany shine on the right is doing sound and who's a database filmmaker, very talented filmmaker but this is a setup we did where it's all about creating a space where someone can relax and really open up, and go the distance with Julia to really go down memory lane.

- And of course all your filmmakers will.

Yeah, there's another one.

- At Barksdale again.

- You see how close we are?

And there's the balance card, there's lights, there's of course the camera but when you see the film, you just see this beautiful, you know, head and shoulders.

- Yes, the rest of the room is a mess, but it's only what's on camera that yes.

- We've mentioned Mary, but that brings up this other story of Mary who you would do your visual research and we have a couple of pictures of that, and see if we can get one of the, we had about four pictures.

So you, where would, where did you find this?

- So this, this is archival footage that was thrown in the dumpster in Cleveland, and somebody came around with a pickup truck, picked it up and gave it to case Western reserve telling the story very briefly, so we got the footage.

We kept seeing this woman, she's Asian so she stands out of course in Cleveland.

Do you have any more pictures?

There she is again on the left, we were like who is this woman?

There she is in the newspaper, and everyone knew her name, Mary, Mary Jung.

And, but like, where was she?

She's obviously a big actress, we thought she'd be very young, we figured, but she's long gone.

Nobody knew where she went.

- And so she is.

- We kept asking and asking and we've tracked her down and tracked her down and there she is head of the democratic party of San Francisco.

- And she's been in San Francisco for 30 years or something.

- Right, and she's a realtor actually, that's her job job, that's in her office.

- Yeah.

- But we just, one thing led to another led to another we finally found her.

- Yeah.

- Which was, and she's great, you know, it was such a delight.

- Well, I was gonna ask can we go back to image of Mary?

I wanna talk about a dynamic between Julia and I don't think we've ever said this publicly.

Okay, so we work really hard to make people look good, you know, and we believe everybody deserves to look good in the film, but the tension always arises that I'm still tweaking the lighting the framing that where's the bounce card that do we see the spark in Mary's eyes is a light too high that we don't see that spark, all that stuff and Julia's like, "We gotta get going, this is a buzz kill, We are losing the energy, Mary's getting bored."

- I'm like chatting away, but I can't talk about anything important right?

So I'm, "how much could you chat about things?"

- And I'm like, always... - I pretty see your smile is pasted on and they're smiling.

- And I'm like, "Almost there, almost there."

"Oh, wait, one more thing, oh, the Microsoft others."

And it's a constant dynamic, a battle, it's a battle between Julia and I to, that I want to tweak the shot more and she's like, we're losing the magic of the moment, if you don't like stop tweaking.

- The Bickersons.

- Yeah, yes.

- Here we go.

- Yeah.

- Well, one thing I wanted to take a quick mention of is again, if you are, wanna see a replay of 9 to 5, the Story Of A Movement, it will air on a week from Sunday on March 21st, Sunday afternoon at 2:00 PM and it will simulcast on CET 48 down in Cincinnati and think TV 16 up in date.

Now what we wanted to do was we want to, you know, one of the things I've, I've reviewed a lot of documentaries and one of the great problems with documentaries says, they all kind of start, they wanna look important and they want to start out really slow.

And it's almost like, you know, the detective who gets knocked out and he's waking up and like, you know, you gotta get out of the gate faster.

You guys had a wonderful, beginning, to your documentary and we wanted to show this, this is it kinda fooled maybe because I'm thinking I'm watching the real thing here, but this is a parody, if we can take a look at the vocational piece.

- Is this is the beginning of the film?

- This is the beginning of the film.

- Here's how.

(upbeat music) (bell ringing) - The clerical field is particularly important to women.

Women holds 70% of the job.

- Take a good look at your career choices, that's what Patty McGrath did after four years of college and even one term toward your master's degree as secretary, you need to be the best you can be.

So Patty worked harder and now she types 110 words per minute.

Janet keeps her hands in condition retyping with finger gymnastics.

She can keep it up all day if she has to.

- My mother, from the get go said, "Mary you don't need to go to college, it would be good enough for you to be a secretary and to work in an office, find a nice husband and have children."

- That is a terrific start to any documentary.

And what we wanna do now is we're gonna go down to our Cincinnati studio and meet a colleague of these folks here, Jamie Myers, slink and Jamie can you hear us?

We're on a bit of a delay.

- I can, I can hear you.

- Okay.

So was this something that you could really sort of flex your muscles as, as an editor and say, I love this.

I'm gonna really make this thing sing.

- Oh yeah, this had all the elements of what would make a good story.

I consider myself a storyteller and this, I knew from the beginning was a meaty project.

You know, it had interviews with these strong amazing women, you know, doing extraordinary things and it had, I knew it was gonna contain tons and tons of archival.

Archival is a lot of fun to go through and offers a stark contrast off into what's going on today and then, you know, just collaborating with Steve and Julia we worked together before and, you know being able to do that again was a good draw.

- Let me ask you, you know, as an editor, you can either have a project where it's very heavily scripted.

They say, here's the dialogue, here's the soundbite, here is the dialogue, here is the soundbite and here are the pieces that you've looked at.

And you're basically just sort of assembling, what's told to you, or you can, you know, you have some freedom to look for some other things and make it slightly different.

Does that vary for you from, let's say project to project?

- Yeah, it just really depends on the project and you know, the directors how they want to go about putting it together.

But for 9 to 5, there was lots of freedom to explore and, you know documentaries like putting together a hundred piece puzzle with 10,000 pieces, that could all fit in several places.

It's a very, very difficult process.

And, you know, I could try all sorts of things.

You know, there was no script, but you know it's a historical documentary.

So we had the sort of a loose timeline.

We knew the order of events and so we use that as at least I use that as a starting point and I knew the movement started in Boston, so I started there and, you know there was great archival footage from Boston.

You just sort of start putting the story together intuitively how you think it might, be placed and you know, over time.

And I would, you know, send, send the cut to Julia and Steve I'd send different scenes and we'd talk about it and they'd have feedback and then it would change.

And that process just continues.

You have to trust the process and it's a distillation, of all this footage and archival and these women telling their stories and eventually your story comes out of it.

And I mean, this was just a wonderful project to work on the archival, that clip you just showed.

I mean, we were getting archival in, you know right up until basically the time when we finished the film.

And it was later on in the process that we started getting all of these sort of educational films in and, you know for the time they were serious, but they were also very, very funny.

And when we found in the open you saw the, the finger gymnastics, you know the open is very, very tricky anyway.

And we did, we, you know, there were so many versions of the beginning of our film, but these educational films were so kinda funny.

And once that finger gymnastic film came in, I was like I knew that's the way we got to go, because it, it spoke to the rest of the film, which is, you know there's women they're ordinary women, but and they were finding, you know, a lot of them weren't activists at all, but they were finding these interesting quirky ways to, you know, stand up against the boss.

And so these like educational films that kind of made you laugh and think, wow, that's the way, you know people thought of things.

Women would go to college, you know, and be excited when they got married.

And, you know, when we found that we were like, okay we should go with this.

And that's how we kinda frame the beginning of the film is like an educational film.

And it looks like that first frame of film the Modern Woman, that was created.

And we stuck with that style as a way to just kinda grab the audience and say, you know, look at this, it's it's ridiculous.

But at the same time, this is the way it was and this is what these women were dealing with.

- From funny to serious, you were one of four editors.

This wasn't even counting Julian and Steve, as editors you were one of four editors who worked online in the house.

What was that like in the sense that I remember Julie and Steve had a meeting with us and were talking about how they had shot 500 hours of that.

I mean, this is massive.

And even they, I mean, you know, they have taught students for years and students would get all axed over the, "Oh I shot 10 hours, how am I gonna turn this into a one hour thing?"

And you know, nothing for them but now they're panicking because there's 500 hours.

How in the world do you wrap your head around all of that?

You must've had meetings every other day.

- Well, the truth is you don't wrap your head around something that big, I don't think you can or you would just, it would be too much.

So, you know, a project that big it's like I have to remind myself not to think about what it is going to be.

'Cause a lot of, you know, in the very beginning we weren't even sure exactly where the story was gonna go and they continue to shoot through a lot of the editing, but you just, you just start cutting, you start going through footage in the on that particular project with several other editors you know, there were five families that were followed and each of us sort of took one of the kids, you know and that's kind of how we separated.

And, you know, you just start going through footage and whittling it down.

And one thing I learned from Julian and Steve that I still use today and even use now, is we put cards up on the wall, you know, as you you might start with a million scenes but he put them on the wall there, you know, they you have different colors that mean different things.

And it's a good way to see your entire project and move things around and just start whittling it down.

And your story eventually comes through.

- Okay, the film school students are taking notes on this.

And so what I wanna do now, and thanks to Jamie, what we're gonna do now is, you know this was a story that started in Boston but then spread all over the country.

And then, you know people are always interested what was going on in my town.

And a lot of Cleveland and Cincinnati was featured in this documentary.

And so what we wanted to do is play a role in of where we get to the Cincinnati story of them organizing.

Let's take a look at that.

(upbeat music) - I was the first organizer in Cleveland, and we had to start from scratch.

Right?

We had no members.

(laughs) - A friend of mine also from New York.

And I called her and told her I'm moving to Cincinnati to work with the Union.

And she was just like, Oh, you know she's just threw up her hands and just laughed.

"You're moving to Cincinnati, Ohio."

- I remember saying I'm gonna be an organizer.

I, it was like, there's a job title.

There's a job title I get to be an organizer.

- I wasn't really that interested in, forming a union but management started these mandatory meetings, that you had to come to and they kindly explained to you what unions were all about that they were all about getting your dues money and they would not come through for you, well, that infuriated me.

It infuriated me for management to tell me how to think about my own employment, there's something up here.

It's like a light bulb went off.

When they are meeting next I'm gonna to be there.

- It was Inga, who just kept asking me over and over again.

You know, she just never gave up.

We're having a meeting tomorrow.

You wanna go?

Most of the time I'd say, no thanks but I'm with you all the way.

(laughs) - I remember the newsletters and the flyers from the Union.

The more I read, the more it dawned on me, "Hey this is my life they're talking about, this is not just a Union this is my life."

- And two of those people who you saw in the documentary are here with us down in the Cincinnati studio.

I have to look over this way just to see who's down there but we have Ingo Goldschmidt and Donna, Samuel Wilson we'll go to Donna for this.

And that is, you know, what was your reaction when you first heard about 9 to 5, you probably got together at lunch with other clerical workers or went out after work for a drink and what was the dynamics?

What was everybody talking about?

Are you in or out or what was going on?

- Well, you know, when it first started, and we would meet after work mostly, most Of the women were very concerned about their pay, their health insurance and just the working conditions that we had there.

And so, people were just expressing their concerns and we were trying to understand what a Union could, how union could help us address those concerns.

- What reaction did you all anticipate from your employers?

I mean, you're working at an ivory tower of a university?

Were they accepting or less accepting?

- You know, it was different, wherever you worked, imagine a giant university.

So, some people worked in a small office and maybe two or three of them with one faculty member.

So maybe they had support and then other people like myself, we worked in the library.

And so there were many, people around us workers and bosses, and some were supportive and some were not.

So I guess I can only speak for myself at first, I thought that, you know, we were working for the university for the students, for the faculty that our bosses would all be supportive, unfortunately they weren't.

But, I think the more pushback we got from bosses, the more we got more interest and more people came forward.

- One question I have for you is sort of what was the one moment that defined for you, sort of that moment of regret, where you say what have I gotten myself into?

And what was that one moment where you felt kind of vindicated and thinking, you know, I did the right thing.

- Okay, I would say that moment came for me, when I participated in negotiating, many of the contracts that we had.

And the first contract I was on, the moment I felt like this was one of the most important things I've ever done in my life, was we were able to get free health insurance for everyone in the bargaining unit and their families.

And I felt like that was probably the most important thing I could have done for those for my co-workers and for their family members and I felt like all the hard work and all the time I had put in was overwhelmingly worth it, I was so happy that day.

- Well, you were working at job where you had so many skills that you were trained for and then when you became a labor activist you acquired a whole new set of skills.

What did you learn from that, sort of job within a job?

- Well, I learned, how to communicate, with people at my bargaining unit, but also the media and how to, define what people needed to do to come together.

The Union trained us in a lot of skills for instance, if you're writing a blurb, on an event that's going to happen next week, if there's four things you should need to communicate, you define the problem, you set out the solution, tell people what you need them to do, and when and where.

- From Ashley and Dayton, she wants to know, do you think there's still a long way to go for women to reach to true equality in the US?

do you think this movement in a way is still happening today?

- Yes, I do think there's a long way for women to reach true equality.

And, I mean as far as pay, and just the way they're viewed in the workplace.

And I do believe that the movement that we started with 9 to 5, I think it will have a lasting effect and does have an effect on the, women that are trying to organize now and make a difference in their workplace.

- Okay, we have a clip coming up here.

This is sort of the nuts and bolts of organizing at the time and this is where you really put all your new skills in the place.

So let's take a look at this clip now.

- Well, when we are the power that's when we started getting like, Whoa, wow.

- Watch out to get people to put the button on, that was a huge action.

Like, then you would know, Oh, I don't know who she is.

- Kind of a secret handshake.

- But she's got a button on.

It was like, you were taking a stand and you were saying, you know what you believed right then.

- Yeah.

- Their bosses ran a really hard Anti-Union campaign sort of a classic anti union campaign.

- They threatened, loss of benefits, they did one-on-ones, they did department meetings.

It was a long haul into the long process to organize a union.

- We continued to build and build and build always working towards the election, before the election.

- I don't know that any of us slept.

We had most of our committee there with us during the vote count and you sit all day long, watching them count these ballots.

- We were determined and we knew it was gonna happen, we were just that confident.

I actually remember one woman, who was counting and she had tears coming down her eyes.

- Everybody was pretty sure we were gonna win, so when we lost, you know, I'm there with all of these, members.

And we had to then cross the street and go to our supporters who had already been partying for a while and tell them we had lost and we weren't getting the union now.

It was a very hard night.

- And we were just stunned.

We just couldn't believe, that it didn't work.

- We had lost by 29 votes, to lose by that little and the amount of time that people had spent on this, it was heartbreaking for everyone, and we all just burst into tears.

- I just, I wasn't sure what the next step was.

(strong howling wind) (raining) - People do feel discouraged in Cincinnati, but we did keep organizing.

- Make, try to bring up issues, make hung in there and just kept swinging.

And you would just go and keep trying and keep trying and send someone else to keep trying.

- Their bosses made some really bad changes to their working conditions to their pay and their health benefits.

People realized that all the promises that these guys made were lies, that helped, I'm gonna just re-energize people.

- Sometimes a bad boss is the best organizer.

- And that's why we said, this is not the time to give up.

- The second vote, we didn't feel like this one was gonna be close.

- And we won big, we won big.

(crowd cheering) (victory music) - In that victory party, Debbie pulled all of us aside and said now the hard work begins and we're like what?

(upbeat music) - We had nowhere else to go and negotiations at that time.

- Right.

- They were just saying no to everything.

So in order, to move them off of their, position that seems set in stone, we had to take some direct action.

- We all went to work that day, because we thought it would be more powerful to actually work out.

I mean we're kinda nervous and worried is everybody gonna come?

- Is it just gonna be me and you?

10 o'clock they blew whistle.

- That's right.

- People got up and started moving out of the building.

(whistle blowing) - People made these cans with the beans it.

I remember thinking we're gonna walk around with the cans.

They were so loud.

(upbeat music) Way more people came out, to go on strike.

They just felt compelled, was way bigger than we ever imagined it was gonna be.

It was our day, and nothing was gonna stop it.

On your office, the woman who never would have anything to do with it, got up and came with you.

So, everybody felt even stronger, and it was a huge grass area, and it was just full of office workers.

(upbeat music) Oh my God.

- what have we done?

- Yes.

Oh boy.

- I think a lot of people, that was the highlight of their career.

- I agree.

- That time when they took action.

(upbeat music) - It's hard to describe everything.

(upbeat music) - You know, I look at this and I'm gonna throw this out to everybody here and down in Cincinnati.

But, when I was a kid growing up in Akron, you could pick up the beacon journal any day, and there would be sorry about a strike going on, or negotiations a strike is looming or a strike has been settled and here's who got what but labor news, was in the news, all the time.

And I think now, it's just not there.

And I think when you see all of this, these stories of organizing and all the games that you know would be played by sides, I think if you're under a certain age I think people look at this and it's like cricket, it is completely foreign to them.

People were doing this, what are they doing exactly?

So what happened?

- Well, I mean, actually the numbers of people, the percentage of workers, in unions has gone way, way down which I would say is at least in large part due to the union avoidance companies that we documented American factory in, that comes up here to are there labor reporters anymore?

Yeah, I don't know.

- So I think that's starting to change in Amazon.

Well, in the last few years, you know, we have teachers in in Oklahoma and West Virginia doing, going on strike.

We have the Amazon workers voting, whether like thousands of Amazon workers voting whether or not to be in a union, you know, meanwhile, does Jeff Bezos need another $10 billion?

He's already got like a hundred billion dollars.

There's a sense of shifting that we have felt making these recent movies that it's like you know what, that it's not fair anymore America, it might've been a fair country for awhile where you could have a decent life, you could get a decent job but things have been so bad for so many people for so long and now this idea that, you know what, if we work in the same place, we have a legal right as Americans to say, we wanna organize, we wanna bargain, with you our boss, and have a contract as a unit, as a bargaining, not get fired and not get fired and we have a right to be in a union that sort of awareness is starting to reemerge.

And, you know, for years corporate America was like, no unions are bad they hurt profits.

But even corporate America is starting to realize, is the bottom line always about profit?

Or is it about creating a society that works.

- Right, so I wanted to extend this to Donna and Anga down South.

You know, when people ask you about, you know your earlier lives as, as being clerical workers and turning into labor activists, and you tell folks about it are there people who just, you know, kinda look at you and just don't really understand what you were doing exactly?

- That's a good question, probably, but I would say, overall once you start explaining, what difference it made in our lives and in the co-workers that we work for, they kinda get like a little bit like a ball goes off and they're like, Oh, so it changed your working conditions, absolutely.

And not just that, but actually having an a part, in changing things at wherever you work.

It actually improves for everybody there either bosses, everyone, because everyone wants the whole company or the university to do well.

So once you include employees in that discussion, then it makes everything better at the workplace.

- Anything you wanna add Inge?

- Well, I would say in a way we had it easier because we are part, of the public sector and the maintenance workers had been unionized for decades.

The professors were unionized and maintenance people the engineers, they had been unionized for years.

So, the culture at the university, was not that prohibitive but in Cincinnati in general, yes, it was it's a very anti-union city, but we, I think we energized people.

We motivated, people to look at unions differently because as you know, was stated earlier we were the lowest paid, you know, workers.

So I think we were an inspiration.

- Okay, and I think one last thing I wanted to ask there, is really well, I'll go on to this, the, in terms of the independent filmmaking, I wanted to get this in because I know we have a lot of universities and schools here who wanna talk about this and that is the state of independent filmmaking today.

You guys have done this for awhile.

You're in a pretty good position.

There just so many people who are struggling to really sort of get into it, to really sort of find their voice.

What is the state of it today?

it seems like it's in great demand.

- You know.

- Just everybody wants content.

- It's funny, I was just thinking about this the other day.

I feel like the work we, I mean, I don't just mean us but other particularly independent non-fiction, filmmakers but even a film its out now called like Nomad land or Minari, you know I think we influenced the culture actually a lot.

I think it's partly, you mentioned journalism.

It's partly, you know we know what's happened to newspapers, you know, badly badly attacked and hit and strunk.

How many, how much money is there a newspapers to do long form investigative work?

The way we were able to do say with American factory or with this film I think people are hungry for these really in-depth stories.

People in general, you know, wanna see other cultures, wanna see other histories, wanna see inside things like a factory and they don't get the chance to read that in the newspaper anymore because they're, they don't have those that long form journalism anymore.

So I feel as though the kind of work that we do, actually is highly prized now, highly paid attention to.

When Joe Biden our new president, like a few days ago, I don't know if you saw this, Jim but he made a statement, about how workers at the workplace, should have a democratic possibility, they should not be intimidated, they should not be fired, If there's gonna be an election, it should be fair.

That comes right out of our film American factory, I'm not saying that's the only thing, but that's something we were given an entire year to talk about, because our film, was very popular, we traveled the world with it and we always talked about that.

So I think it influenced, I think our films influenced our culture.

- Julia and I you know, Julie's been making films for 50 years, I've been making films for almost 40 years but we are lucky now that documentaries have sort of come into popularity, largely because of the streamers because of Netflix first and then Amazon, Apple, all these other folks.

We have students who, years ago would say documentaries are boring, but now they come to us and say, "Did you see this documentary on Netflix about."

And it's a golden moment for, for non-fiction cinema and people realize it's not just spinach, you don't have the burden of telling a good story, you've gotta find amazing people like, like Inga and Donna, you've gotta get a great editor like Jamie, you've gotta put together a team and dive deep and it's not easy to make a good movie, but if you make a good movie, it's easier than ever to get it out.

- And would you say I mean, the demand for independent filmmaking is greater than ever?

- Yes.

- What, what do you tell people who are kinda starting out in this, that, you know, this really is your potentially you have to find your strong suit, which is you're either something of a good reporter or you're just a really good storyteller.

And if you can be both, that's great.

But is there, you know, is there a particular, I guess need now among documentary filmmakers, that you'd say these are aspects that you'd really like to see honed.

- I always tell people, who wanted to tell non fiction stories, find the stories that only you can tell, that only you have access to, that only you have an understanding of, find the stories that are unique to new to you, you, your family, your neighborhood, your block whatever it might be, like don't think about, well what will sell to Netflix?

I think this might sell to Netflix.

- Terrible.

- That never works, you know this is what HBO was looking for.

No, you have to tell the stories that only you can tell.

- We're incredibly lucky, that we are trusted by the people if the Dayton, Ohio to have told stories like the last truck or American factory, without that trust that we try never, ever to take for granted we could never do this kind of work.

And we feel so fortunate to be trusted but it's partly 'cause we live here, and we are gonna run into people at the dragons ballgame, you know, and if we make a film that's dishonest or insulting to someone like we're gonna hear about it, you know, and we wanna be accountable, we wanna be accountable to Dayton.

And we yet, we want to also tell Dayton stories to the world that are compelling.

- He used to be a huge disadvantage that we lived in Ohio.

Not, not that long ago.

You don't live in New York, LA, you're a filmmaker, you live in Ohio.

We got that all the time.

And, you know, we missed before the internet.

We missed out on important meetings and fundraising and stuff like that.

But now, I think it's highly prized to be not in a big city.

Somehow the country has woken up, you know, maybe it's because of the recent wave of the, you know, when Trump got in to the presidency, of like there's a big country out there and the coasts don't really know what's going on.

- I would say for emerging filmmakers who wanna get into documentary, they need to watch the top documentaries of the year.

So, you know, like the Academy of motion pictures just released what they call the Short List, which is 15, feature length documentaries that are gonna compete for the five Oscar nominations this year.

There are films on that list, great films like a movie called Time, a movie called Crip Camp a movie called 76 days.

- Oh yeah.

- These films should be studied and now they're on Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Apple they're out there, they're easy to find and they should be studied for their storytelling.

- So should the great films of the past will short the great documentary.

- What I'm trying say is like, a lot of young, we hear from a lot of young documentary makers.

They only think about like, this is the issue and not the story - I want to ask you, one question, we just have a couple of minutes left, but it wasn't your first film and this won't be your last film, but union maids and and this one, but are these essentially union maids and 9 to 5 kind of bookends for your career?

What'd you say?

- I have thought about that, I have thought about that it's great that the 9 to 5 is like the last film, because it's very much about, it's about women and my first film growing up female was the first film of the women's movement.

And then Union Maids is a film about working women and women organizing.

And this film is kind of like 40 some years later comes full circle, but not it's top secret but we actually have another film coming out.

- Okay.

- Okay, and I just wanted to say, I was kinda impressed.

I was looking at your Wiki profile and a first sentence here, they use the word, a term radical and a radical feminist.

Did you know that you're a radical feminist?

- I wouldn't disagree with you.

- Yeah, I know its beautiful.

- It just seemed kind of an odd thing to say right off the bat.

I wanna thank you all for coming in and I want to thank our guests Donn in Cincinnati, Jamie, Inga and Donna, thanks for being with us.

You know, whatever else you guys are working on, you'll always have a home, you know, on our, on our channel.

- Thank you.

- So we thank you very much.

And I, and again, one dimension that we have many partners that we want to think who took part in this and got the word out.

And we thank you for your questions.

And, and so we're going to, we're gonna close it out and you'll see a full screen of all the partners who worked with us.

So we thank you very much for joining us and we'll see you at the next screening.

See you later.