New Documentary: “The Flagmakers”

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: And now, we look at one of the world’s most recognizable symbols, the U.S. flag. It is seen hanging on almost every public building and from countless American homes. But if you have ever wondered where all those flags come from and who makes them, the answer is to be found in a new documentary, “The Flagmakers.”

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: When I moved from Serbia, it surprised me a little bit how much Americans love their flag.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: In all our flags, we have pieces of our employees’ stories.

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AMANPOUR: Directors Sharon Liese and Cynthia Wade meet the factory workers who are stitching stars and stripes for a living. And they join Hari Sreenivasan to explore that and the relationship they’ve built with this national emblem.

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HARI SREENIVASAN, CORRESPONDENT: Thanks. Sharon Liese, Cynthia Wade, thank you both for joining us. Sharon, I want to start with you. How did you find this factory that made flags in the middle of Wisconsin and saw that there is a story here?

SHARON LIESE, DIRECTOR, “THE FLAGMAKERS”: Yes. Well, you know, like with every film, it has its own story about how you found it. And Cynthia and I have worked together for many years and we’ve been good friends for many years and we always talk about what’s going on in the world. And we were really noticing that anti-immigrant sentiment and wanted to do something in that space. And I live in Kansas City. And at first, we found this program that taught women how to sew, immigrants. And at the end of this program, they get jobs. And we found that there was this one woman who got a job at a flag factory. And once we saw that, we were like, this has to be the story and we could not get access to that one place, the factory in Kansas City. So, we did a nationwide search. And at that point, we found this place in Milwaukee called Eder Flag and Cynthia was on a shoot, a commercial shoot in Chicago at that time. And I called her and said, hey, I just found this place. I just talked to them. Can you get there tomorrow? And she did. And then, our film came to be.

SREENIVASAN: Yes. So, Cynthia, describe the first time you walk into this flag factory, probably a place that most people will never get to see the inside of, but what made you say, I think we have a thing?

CYNTHIA WADE, “THE FLAGMAKERS”: It’s the most extraordinary thing to walk into this flag factory. It is the largest flag and flagpole manufacture in the United States. So, there are over 200 employees. The majority of them are immigrants and refugees from around the world. You hear dozens of languages on the factory floor. And what was so touching to me, which that at every station, a sewer would have just things from their home country, their home life. Sometimes it would be a flag of their home country, sometimes it might be just a photo of family back home. I heard radios. So, you hear Moroccan music and Serbian music. And then, when I walked into the break room and saw the employees eating lunch and I saw these Tupperware’s opening up where it was the food of the world, I thought, wow, this is like a United Nations right here and it’s — in a way, it’s a microcosm of the country.

SREENIVASAN: Yes. And what is it, Sharon, you know, when you started diving into this place, these people, how did you figure out which stories to start focusing on, because if they are refugees or if they have come here looking for a better life, they probably all went through some sort of hardship to get here?

LIESE: Yes. I mean, it’s true that every person — 200 — of all the 200 employees, every single story you find is like more compelling than the next one. So, it was a really tough decision when we chose — had to choose the people because we had so many stories that actually didn’t make it into the film because the characters have story after story. And our main person, Radica, who is from Serbia, we started out — when we first met her, we thought, she is our guide. She’s going to take us all the way through this film. And then, we started working on it because it was — it took us three years and then, we edited for a year, we kind of looked away from that idea for a while and started making it just a verite film. And then, we realized that our instincts were right and we went back to having Radica be our guide throughout the film.

SREENIVASAN: So, while you’re filming this, the nation is also going through this national reckoning on race. And you, in the film, introduced us to an African American employee named Sugar Ray. Tell us a little bit about him and his nuanced relationship with the flag and with the country and with race in America.

LIESE: Yes. We thought his story was so important to include because he has such a complicated relationship with the American flag and such a complicated relationship with America. And we don’t really feel like there’s enough voice to that story and we were really fortunate that he was willing to share that with us and then, to share it with the world in the film. Yes, he’s — he — it’s interesting because he grew up in Milwaukee and kind of grew up seeing a little bit of a different America and, you know, as he says, you love America but it does not always love you back. And then, he sees immigrants, like you said, come in and they are so full of hope. And so — and they are coming here to make good on the promise that America supposedly has out there. And Sugar Ray, yes, does give us a dose of reality and lets us know that not everybody really can get to that promise.

SREENIVASAN: And there’s another character named Barb who kind of have an idea maybe that she has more conservative views on things.

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BARB, FLAG SEWER: Good morning. Nice people here. Really nice. I’m tired, man. Take a nap in one of these flags. Sorry. I don’t remember all their names. Their names are different than America names. But that’s OK. I mean, if you come to the country legally, that’s fine. So many flags. It’s kind of in my blood. My ancestors fought for that flag. My grandfather was in service, my father, my brother. And I am just proud of it. That’s my country. Better than a lot of countries, that’s all I know.

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SREENIVASAN: She’s the one who is helping a fellow employee study for maybe a citizenship test or a green card test. I mean, you know, like brushing up on the constitution.

LIESE: Yes. I mean, what we loved about Barb is that she’s not a stereotype of what we would expect. And that, you know, when we sat in audiences with people and watched them see this film. And when she retires, people have tears rolling down their eyes. And that’s what people have an experienced with her that she is not just one dimensional. So, you know, we felt like she was so important to the film because she let people see that, you know, she may have certain politics but the connection and the humanity between people is just so much bigger than that.

SREENIVASAN: Cynthia, there’s another character I want to introduce to the audience named Ali who came from Iraq.

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ALI, FLAG SEWER (through translator): Between all the papers and procedures, I waited for twelve years with the hopes of coming to America. In Baghdad, there were lots of murders and death by mortar shells and IEDs. My neighborhood was called “the Dearth Road.” More than once, I survived explosions only 150 meters away from me.

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SREENIVASAN: The struggles that he is going through, similar to so many immigrants in America, include, you know, a very difficult conversation he’s having with someone close to him about something that happened to him in a store.

WADE: Yes. I mean, we met Ali, he had been in the United States for less than 90 days when we met him, a man with a young family who fled Iraq. It took him 12 years to get to the United States. They landed in Milwaukee in the middle of the snow just before, essentially, the pandemic hit. And he came with such great hope and so much excitement because he was sewing the American flag. And it’s interesting in the film because you see Sugar Ray, he was born and bred in Milwaukee, a black man, say, I understand the pride that the immigrants have towards the American flag. Like that’s a real thing to really want to go after and find the American dream, but there are many stories to the experience of being American. And Sugar Ray, obviously, just has — had that lived experience of inequality in this nation. And then, a year and a half into our filming, Ali gets hit, just walloped by a stranger at a Walmart.

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ALI (through translator): As I was holding my daughter, a guy walked up. I thought he wanted to say “hi” to my baby and give her a compliment. I didn’t expect to find myself on the ground. He hit me with something. I don’t know if it was his hand, or if he was holding something. The hit was so hard, I lost consciousness for about half a minute or more.

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WADE: And the stranger hit him presumably because he was speaking Arabic and then fled. And suddenly, those dreams of Ali and his wife shatter a bit, are shaken, because it isn’t as simple as what he thought when he came to the country. And that was important for us because that exists too, like there’s a lot of gray area and this country, and it can give you so much hope but it also can break your heart.

SREENIVASAN: Sharon, one of the scenes that we see in the film is Sugar Ray and his son, it looks like, watching scenes of January 6th. And I wonder how the people that you spoke with or in touch with at the factory kind of saw the — literally, the very product that they make that is supposed to be this symbol of freedom was one of the things that people were carrying in as they stormed the capitol? I mean, it’s just was an interesting moment and I wondered kind of what’s going through that person’s mind who is sewing this flag when they watch that TV?

LIESE: Yes. It was a very solemn event in time for people in the factory. And I would say that most people we spoke to, because we did actually do a series of interviews, and it was — we thought it was also very helpful and cathartic for people to talk about it. But that’s not how they — because it’s not how they — what they think about or what they are doing when they make the flag. I mean, they almost — I could go so far as to say that they — you know, they do it with love. I mean, they are so careful and so proud of what they make that it was really more than a slap in the face for them to have that happen and to see that. I mean, it’s almost the flag is somewhat sacred to them in that way because it is their work, and it’s the work of many people, because they do it together and not one person just makes each flag, it’s many people that make the flags.

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RADICA, SEWING MANAGER: I love America. I know it’s not perfect. But that is beauty. You don’t love something because it is perfect. You love something because it is yours. Here she is. I wish all my sewers are here today so they could sese.

SREENIVASAN: What was it like kind of watching that either first or second hand? Because, you know, it’s hard for people to imagine that level of pride that she has in literally her work.

LIESE: Radica did take so much pride in making these flags and in running a department where all these flags are made and took so much pride in being an American and a Serbian. So, for her, being able to go to the Statue of Liberty and see one of either flags flying there was just a moment of a lifetime for her.

WADE: It was extraordinary to watch it. She’d never been to New York before. She’d never seen — I mean, they make flags for, you know, government buildings all over, for inaugurations, you name it. They make flags. But it was one of the first times that she’d actually traveled outside of the State of Wisconsin and saw the flag, and that was their flag flying on the Statue of Liberty. I mean, she uses words like, you know, I believe that the flag has a sole, which really, I think, startled both Sharon and I first when we heard that, like, wow. And then, during the — after the January 6th insurrection, she kind of said — in an interview said, it’s not flags fault, which I thought was such a wonderful statement. Like she really sees the flag as a living, breathing thing and has a very personal relationship to it.

SREENIVASAN: So, a little bit of a spoiler alert, Cynthia, tell us why does Radica make this decision near the end of the film? She makes a pretty big choice, and what was behind that?

WADE: Yes. I mean, talk about not knowing where a film is going to go, towards the end of our filming. Actually, we thought we were done filming. Radica told us that she was making the decision to move back to Serbia. That she had given her best to the United States. She felt the United States had given its best to her. But that, ultimately, you know, Serbia is the place that she wants to spend the rest of her life. And that was so stunning to us. That you can — and again, it’s a gray area, right? Issue where you can love this country and also ache for it and also miss where you’ve come from, miss where you were born. And Sharon — kudos to Sharon because, at first, I was like, oh my goodness, we’ve been editing for a year. I can’t open this back up and now, include that she’s moving to Serbia. Like it kind of blew my mind. I thought, I can’t do this. And Sharon was right. She said, no, this makes it much more complex and interesting, that you can love this country, give it your best, have your best years here and yet, you can still miss home. And so, we decided to follow it. So, she left. She went back to Serbia.

SREENIVASAN: Did it change, Cynthia, how you maybe went into the film thinking about flags versus how you think of them now when you see them out there?

WADE: Yes, definitely. I mean, I think in part, I was really excited and curious about making this film to start because I could feel in myself this discomfort with the American flag with just the feeling that you see a flag in front of somebody’s home or in the back of somebody’s pickup truck or a sticker on somebody’s car and you immediately think, oh, they are telegraphing something. They are telling me what — sort of like what team they are on. And I was feeling, you know, in sort of 2018, 2019 that it really had become weaponized, that the flag had been co-opted by a very narrow specific group of people and then, it wasn’t really my flag. And if I put a flag out in front of my home, I would be saying something that wasn’t exactly how I was feeling because it just felt incredibly narrow. So, to then go in and spent three years at this large flag factory where immigrants and refugees and born and bred Midwesterners are working together, now, when I look at a flag I think about the people. I think about the people literally stitching this sort of greatest symbol of our democracy. And I — my heart aches. I hope our democracy makes it. I think we are in a very fragile state. And I think we are also pretty polarized and it would be just a wonderful thing if we could all come back and know that this is our flag and we can have differences in opinion, but it is our flag for all of us.

SREENIVASAN: It was a fantastic film. The film is called “The Flagmakers.” Directors Cynthia Wade and Sharon Liese, thank you so much for your work. And I don’t think I will look at a flag the same again.

WADE: Thank you so much.

LIESE: Thank you.