Documentary: 'Independent America'

[deadparrot]

Note: This is the second in a series of independent documentaries we are spotlighting on the Hot Zone. Our first, "Shadow Company," looked at security contractors in
Iraq. With our second feature, we shift focus and place, to the U.S. "Independent America," by Hanson Hosein and Heather Hughes, asks if small, independent businesses are a thing of the past in modern America.

HANSON HOSEIN: Basically I've lived in Paris and Tel Aviv and New York all my adult life. I never realized how important my relationships were with independent businesses until I moved to a bit of a retail wasteland in Canada and saw the proliferation of big boxes and realized how much I hated it.

I was embedded with the U.S. military during the war (in Iraq) and spent six months covering that. When I got back I decided to get reacquainted with my wife and the neighborhood. We took a trip down the Pacific Coast Highway and I thought , "Let's try to reconnect with those independent businesses that I thought that I had those relationships with."

So, we made that first trip and that's where we got the idea for the documentary. It's really based on our adult life and what matters to us and how we live. We wanted to see if it was still possible to do business with mom and pop or whether they were a dying breed as we saw in Canada.

http://hotzone.yahoo.com/b/hotzone/blogs17327