Teaser Camper

Older Americans try a new version of retirement: serving as migrant labor for Amazon and living on the cheap in retrofitted vans parked on government land in the desert southwest. When crisis intrude, how long can they keep the dream alive ?

WORK! CAMP! ENJOY!

Retirement ain’t what it used to be. Across the developed world, where generations of retirees have become accustomed to well-funded pensions and golden years filled with backyard drinks and golf, old age is taking on a new cast. The social welfare networks that were designed to underwrite a dignified old age have proven inadequate. Now, one hundred and forty five years after Bismark invented “retirement” to fend of Marxists, elderly people are returning to the work force in large numbers: Geriatric Migrant Labor.

Nowhere in the developed world is the problem more pronounced than in America. A growing army of downwardly-mobile older people are living in converted vans and small RV’s because they had to sell their houses. They travel between makeshift work camps and find seasonal employment with companies like Amazon, working 15-hour days packing holiday gifts in huge warehouses in places like Fernley, Arizona. Outside of the busy shopping season, some take tickets at NASCAR races, or work as campsite hosts. Others “hibernate,” reducing their spending to almost nothing as they park in small groups in no-fee federal wilderness land. Is this making the best of a dire situation, a new form of late-life liberation, or something in between ?

The film follows a year in the life of 5 people driving out their golden years in the American west. We see how they tackle financial and health crisis; how they stay vigorous with new friends and new lovers; and how they balance the late-life thrill of living for today and being needed with the perils of not having a real plan as the body inevitably breaks down under the strain of long days of hard labor. Though it may seem that they’ve pulled up stakes out of desperation, many view it as the adventure of a lifetime—perhaps their final adventure.

Ultimately WORK! CAMP! ENJOY! is about more than the societal changes it depicts. It shows people trying to cope with the ever-changing demands of life and maintaining dignity in the face of a society that seems to place scant value on it. It’s about people finding out what really counts in life, and holding on to it any way that they can.