Greg Salustro fondly remembers road trips with friends in his 1975 Chevrolet Capris Classic to Chicago, when living in the city was only just a dream. His documentary, American Dreaming, which is his first in the works, travels back even further to the cars of the past and the creative minds behind Detroit's automobiles.
Salustro grew up in Detroit during a time when his neighborhood became newly integrated. Born with cars in his blood, his father worked for Ford Motor Company and would sometimes bring home cars with experimental engines. It was a Ford family, he said.
More than just hearing running engines, Salustro grew up within a large Italian family and developed a love for opera from listening to the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts. He still remains a huge opera fan and his interests expanded over the years to include architectural history, which he studied in graduate school and film.
"I've always loved film and part of that was because growing up in a larger, noisy family, the only privacy I could get was staying up late night and watching all the old movies that were rerun constantly on late night television," said Salustro.
Salustro received his bachelor's degree from Michigan State University and a masters in public administration from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He has worked at Chicago nonprofits, including Howard Brown Health Center, Chicago Public Media and Thresholds. He recently retired as vice president of external affairs at Golden Apple Foundation and teaching at Columbia College. Now, he is the treasurer of the board of directors of Chicago Filmmakers and the volunteer chair of Reeling film festival, and is building a life with his husband Wayland Wong in Evanston and in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
"I joined the board of Chicago Filmmakers just because I wanted to see the LGBT film fest come back," said Salustro. "It had been on hiatus for a year and I wanted to bring it back. So, I really got involved with film and documentary film in the last three years with my interest in LBGTQ film."
Salustro and Robert Edwards, also a Detroit native, have been friends for 35 years and were inspired for their own film project as they visited garage sales and discovered beautiful, old drawings of old automobiles. As they started to collect the drawings, Salustro knew they had to make a movie about these unseen works of art and tell the artists' stories for preservation.
American Dreaming is a full-length documentary about U.S. automotive styling during 1946-1973, featuring interviews of the male and female artists who designed Detroit's automobiles. Salustro is the production's executive producer, while Edwards is the producer. The project also includes cinematographers Jim Toscano and Danny Giani.
"The story is the story of how after World War II the automobile companies had excessive capacity and they had to reinvent a way to get Americans to go back and buy new cars, so they hired artists to make concept designs," said Salustro. "What we're discovering is that there's these rich histories, of course. It's another industry where a design concept or an artistic concept led American culture and we're finding that it's rich with LGBTQ stories. As we're going forward with this documentary, we're finding while it wasn't conceived as an LGBTQ story, we're learning that there's an LGBTQ contribution that enriches the story."
Salustro and Edwards also co-curated the exhibition "American Dreaming: Detroit's Golden Age of Automotive Design," running through Saturday, May 2, at Lawrence Technological University in Michigan. The exhibit coincides with the documentary as it offers a look inside the design studios of Detroit's automakers from 1946-1973. Salustro describes this exhibit as somewhat of a premiere to the public and a space where some of the original designers will see their work displayed for the first time.
"For the first time they're going to be getting the credit that they deserved for 50/60 years," Salustro said.
The work for the film began about a year ago. The process has included tracking down the artists, building trust with them, and scheduling them for the film. The artists' stories, Salustro emphasized, have never been told. As Salustro and Edwards continue to work on the piece, they have about 60 hours of film and about 60 more hours to go with edits to make over the approximately the next six months. Within the work, 11 or 12 artists are expected to be interviewed in total. An Indiegogo campaign is set up to raise funds for the film.
"For me, the specialness about the topic itself is that this is a time where American industry led the ideals of the nation," Salustro said. "Art is influencing design and our culture and innovation. You can see it at Apple, you can see it at Google, you can see it everywhere in Silicon Valley, you can see firms in 1871 in Chicago and innovative firms are doing their best to incorporate artistic concepts into consumer products and even into management theory. It's all relevant."
For more information, visit:Americandreamingfilm.com or https://www.facebook.com/AmericanDreamingMovie/info?tab=page_info.
To donate to the "American Dreaming" Indiegogo campaign, visit www.indiegogo.com/projects/american-dreaming-mid-century-car-design-on-film
