Kate Geiger spent 24 years working at the General Motors plant in Moraine. After the plant shut down on Dec. 23, 2008, Geiger enrolled at Sinclair Community College the following spring.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been the most amazing challenge,\u201d Geiger, 45, said about being a student.<\/p>\n
In June 2008, Geiger, along with thousands of GM-Moraine employees, were told the plant would be shut down in six months.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when filmmakers Julia Reichart and Steven Bognar began spending time outside of the plant.<\/p>\n
\u201cA couple from Yellow Springs were interviewing people as they were leaving the plant and they wanted to start making a documentary about it,\u201d Geiger said.<\/p>\n
Geiger and some of her fellow employees decided to help the filmmakers with interviews and information. Geiger, who was six years from retirement, said some employees were hesitant to speak to Reichart and Bognar.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe saw that it was a serious documentary and it wasn\u2019t meant to exploit us,\u201d she said. \u201cWe felt like people needed to talk to them because they needed to tell our story.\u201d<\/p>\n
On Feb. 2, \u201cThe Last Truck: Closing of a GM Plant\u201d was nominated for Best Documentary Short by the Academy Awards.<\/p>\n
Geiger said the project compiled 150 hours of footage that had to be cut into 40 minutes. The film premiered at the Schuster Center on Aug. 19 and Geiger said the event was unbelievable.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was just completely blown away,\u201d Geiger said about her first thoughts after viewing the documentary. \u201cIt is just mindboggling that (Reichart and Bognar) can just put so much passion through those clips in the sequence that they did.\u201d<\/p>\n
Geiger said the situation behind the film was unfortuante, but it\u2019s great the film was nominated for an Oscar. Geiger said she would be attending the Academy Awards on March 7 with both filmmakers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt means (the situation) is making it into the mainstream,\u201d Geiger said. \u201cAt first, we thought the movie would be made for us as a living photo album. But what we saw is that (the film) became a statement.\u201d<\/p>\n
Geiger, a Visual Communication major at Sinclair, described her situation as a Sinclair student as bittersweet.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been good and bad,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s been really, really hard \u2026 There have been times where I have been so frustrated I\u2019ve been brought to tears.\u201d<\/p>\n
But, Geiger said her Sinclair experience has been a blessing after the closing of the Moraine plant.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy life has become very exciting,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s challenging and I feel alive. I\u2019m excited for the first time ever about my future.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Kate Geiger spent 24 years working at the General Motors plant in Moraine. After the plant shut down on Dec. 23, 2008, Geiger enrolled at Sinclair Community College the following spring. \u201cIt\u2019s been the most amazing challenge,\u201d Geiger, 45, said about being a student. In June 2008, Geiger, along with thousands of GM-Moraine employees, were […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3],"tags":[24,458,1025,320,1026,1272,1023,1022,998,1027,1024],"class_list":["post-4365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tartan-news","tag-academy","tag-awards","tag-closing","tag-general","tag-gm","tag-joseph-stueve","tag-last","tag-motors","tag-oscars","tag-plant","tag-truck"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-18p","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4365"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4365\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4388,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4365\/revisions\/4388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}