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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).