Middle Atlantic Region, The

Year Published: 1976

Format: 16mm

Color: Color

Sound: sound

Description: Director Jon Wilkman proposed to revolutionize geographical educational films by telling the story of the land through the stories of its people, in their own words, in the eight films in his "Geography' series. The films involve people of several ethnicities. In Middle Atlantic Region (1976), for example, a black truck driver tell how racism affects his business, a satisfied white ad exec who wants her children growing up in New York City is juxtaposed with a struggling single black mother who argues the opposite opinion, and, in a nasty Philadelphia dump, a supervisor suggests the best alternative to dwindling landfill is to fill northern Pennsylvania strip mines with urban trash, a solution he’s confident will work for 40 years.