Featuring breathtaking sequences of workers walking along narrow steel beams high above street level, High Steel is based largely on the experiences of one Mohawk ironworker working in Manhattan, Harold McComber.
The film contrasts the daring work of McComber and his coworkers in the skies above New York City with life back home in Kahnawake.
It also explains how the Mohawk people living across the Saint Lawrence River from Montreal first gained their reputation for high steel work in the late 19th century by working on a railway bridge that ran through their land.
However, as the film recounts through narration and archival photos, such a reputation came at a terrible cost.
[1][2][3] The film's director of photography was John Spotton, with Don Francks as narrator, Julian Biggs as producer, and a song by Bruce Mackay, "Mountains of Iron and Steel" (replacing Gordon Lightfoot, who was originally supposed to have provided music).