Floored is a 2009 documentary film

Documentary film

Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

 about the people and business of the Chicago

Chicago

Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...

 trading floors. The film focuses specifically on several Chicago floor trader

Floor trader

A floor trader is a member of a stock or commodities exchange who trades on the floor of that exchange for his or her own account. The floor trader must abide by trading rules similar to those of the exchange specialists who trade on behalf of others. The term should not be confused with floor broker...

s who have been impacted by the electronic trading

Electronic trading

Electronic trading, sometimes called etrading, is a method of trading securities , foreign exchange or financial derivatives electronically...

 revolution and whose jobs have been threatened by the use of computer

Computer

A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...

s in the trading world. Directed by James Allen Smith, the file runs 77 minutes.

The film has become particularly relevant in light of the U.S. financial crisis of 2009; Greg Burns of the Chicago Tribune

Chicago Tribune

The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...

 has said of the film's director, "By dealing with hard times in the workplace, Smith taps into a vein running through millions of lives in this brutal recession

Recession

In economics, a recession is a business cycle contraction, a general slowdown in economic activity. During recessions, many macroeconomic indicators vary in a similar way...

, as the nation’s unemployment rate soars toward 10 percent"

Critics have suggested a meta-fictional

Metafiction

Metafiction, also known as Romantic irony in the context of Romantic works of literature, is a type of fiction that self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction, exposing the fictional illusion...

 subtext

Subtext

Subtext or undertone is content of a book, play, musical work, film, video game, or television series which is not announced explicitly by the characters but is implicit or becomes something understood by the observer of the work as the production unfolds. Subtext can also refer to the thoughts...

 to the documentary, linking the film's storyline about Chicago traders to the plight of independent filmmakers in a time of the declining influence of film festival

Film festival

A film festival is an organised, extended presentation of films in one or more movie theaters or screening venues, usually in a single locality. More and more often film festivals show part of their films to the public by adding outdoor movie screenings...

s and the ubiquitousness of free internet content

External links

• Review: Chicago’s Open-Outcry Traders New York Times. 2010-05-07