Film chronicles furniture plant closing

"With These Hands" to premiere in November

Heath Combs -- Furniture Today, August 19, 2008

GREENSBORO, N.C. - The closing of Hooker Furniture's last U.S. case goods plant in the company's hometown of Martinsville, Va., is the subject of a locally produced documentary film to be released in November.

The project honors the generations of skilled workers who were employed at the plant, said filmmakers Matt Barr and David Williams, a furniture industry veteran.

Chris Holmes, left, Matt Barr and David Williams are working on a documentary film that chronicles the closing of Hooker Furniture’s last domestic case goods plant.

The 80-minute film, "With These Hands: The Story of an American Furniture Factory," will premiere in November at the Virginia Museum of Natural History in Martinsville.

Williams, a Lexington, N.C., native and president of furniture component sales firm D.H. Williams and Associates, is assistant producer on the film. Barr is an associate professor at the University of Greensboro's Department of Broadcasting and Cinema.

The two met last early year during a screening of another documentary by Barr, "Wild Caught: The Life and Struggles of an American Fishing Town," which follows the lives of commercial fishermen in coastal North Carolina threatened by globalization and waterfront development.

At the screening, Williams suggested that the closing of the Hooker plant represented a chance to profile the diminishing U.S. wood furniture manufacturing industry.

"We read about factory closings all the time. But this story will humanize it," Williams said. "The era in which we all lived is past. We've not done a very good job of collecting it and honoring the people that worked in those factories."

The closure marked the company's exit from domestic wood manufacturing and its transition to a design, marketing, logistics and global sourcing business model. Hooker now imports all its wood and metal furniture, although it continues to produce upholstery domestically.

Williams worked as a furniture industry consultant to the film, helping arrange interviews with former Hooker chairman Clyde Hooker and investment banker and industry expert Jerry Epperson.

The filmmakers collected about 80 hours of footage at the plant. The film tracks the last load of kiln-dried wood through the factory on March 19, 2007, and the auction of plant equipment.

It also includes interviews with globalization experts and 12 plant workers. It tells the history of the plant, which opened in 1924, telling about the facility's expansion and Hooker's gradual shift to case goods imports.

The film also shows how workers are adjusting a year after the plant closing, Barr added.

"Within a larger framework of the loss of 3 million manufacturing jobs in the U.S., this film is a very positive film," he said. "I know that's weird because it's a plant closing film, but none of the workers were embittered. They were glad to work for a great company that treated them well through the process of letting them go."

Barr and Williams are screening an eight-minute preview of the film, which is in post production. They hope to raise about $15,000 to help with entry costs into film festivals and DVD duplication, among other expenses.

The two hope to screen the film for the thousands of workers laid off from furniture factories in the Southeast.

"We want to be able to go through the furniture crescent, the area of the world that furniture manufacturers existed in and show the film and talk to the people," said Williams. "Hopefully the people that worked in the factories will have an opportunity to view it."

Barr can be reached at mbarr@uncg.edu or by calling (336) 334-3887.