Last September, I wrote about Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century, Jessica Bruder's important, fascinating book-length investigation into the Americans who live on the road out of economic necessity, including the Camperforce, a precariat army of retirees who saved carefully all their working lives, only to be bankrupted in the 2008 financial crisis who travel from Amazon warehouse to Amazon warehouse, filling in as seasonal and temp workers on gruelling, 12-hour shifts that leave them in pain and with just enough money to make it to the next stop.
Now, Bruder has teamed up with the Academy-Award-winning documentarian Laura Poitras (previously), who won Best Documentary for Citizenfour, her amazing movie about Edward Snowden.
Bruder and Poitras's 15-minute documentary, directed by Brett Story "Camperforce" features hidden-camera footage of the secretive interiors of Amazon's warehouses, along with the stories and lives of the nomadic senior citizens who worked there.
It ends with quite a kicker: the Camperforce is being displaced by people in their 30s who have given up on ever owning a home, who understand that the urban rental markets have been cornered by speculators and hedge funds, pricing working people out of the market.
