Dieter Marcello

Using one of the Lumière Brothers' first films of workers leaving the Factory as his starting point, Farocki provides an insight to changes in industrial production, workers' strikes and motion pictures-- via images of workers leaving factories throughout the years.

From the turn of the century - as emigrants to a New World - through the twenties and through the thirties - with great industry and the Great Depression - and finally during Detroit's heroic period in World War II - working in the armaments industry, the "arsenals of democracy." What remains when such men's dreams become real?

Documentary film.