In the 1920s, thousands of immigrant Jewish garment workers put a new spin on the American dream by managing to pull themselves out of urban slums and ghettos and pooling their resources to build four big, beautiful, cooperatively owned apartment complexes in the Bronx, collectively known as the United Workers Cooperative Colony or “the Coops.” Spanning two generations, At Home in Utopia follows the Coops from their idealistic beginning as an oasis of progressive social values and radical ideas; through the hardships of the Depression where they took to the streets and demanded (and got) mortgage relief and better conditions for workers; to the post-WWII era of growing anti-communist sentiments and McCarthyism, where their dreams began to unravel. An epic tale of the struggle for human justice and racial equality, this documentary tracks the rise and fall of one experimental community from the 1920s into the 1950s, paying close attention to the passions that bound them together and those that tore them apart.
This film will be preceded by student film competition finalists, ON THE ROAD TO TEL-AVIV (Dir. Khen Shalem, Israel, 2007, 15 min.) and ROSENZWEIG - BORN TO DANCE (Dir. Keren Hakak, Israel, 2007, 17 min.).
