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Taken for a Ride (1996).
Directed by Jim Klein and Martha Olson.
Distributed by New Day Films, http://www.newday.com. 55 minutes.
Jim Klein has made a number of important documentaries, at least two of which are canonical: Union Maids (1976) and Seeing Red (1983). Both films, made with Julia Reichert, are histories of leftist organizing structured around interviews with people who were directly involved with it. Klein and Reichert also started New Day Films in the 1970s, a distribution cooperative with many social issue films, including Taken for a Ride. This film, directed by Jim Klein, with Martha Olsen as researcher, is a very different documentary than the two mentioned above, perhaps less weighty as a historical document, but also more interested in intervening in specific public policies and trends in contemporary American life. The documentary works like an investigative report on a set of social problems and their causes. The problems covered are fairly recognizable ones: our over-reliance on cars and the failures of public transportation to meet the needs of people. Taken for a Ride identifies the historical causes for these problems in General Motors' projects to shape American life around its interests. This is a provocative, important history, which is competently argued, with good evidence and archival material, some of which is...