28:43; U.S.
Director: Will Delphia
Synopsis: A documentary film examining the Alta Gracia factory in the Dominican Republic, a new college apparel company attempting to challenge the sweatshop model of production by creating a factory with living wages, good working conditions, and an independent trade union.
Full Film
Director: Katharine Round
Synopsis: Based on the best-selling book The Spirit Level, this film shows why a more equal society is better for all of us, including the rich. Yet still this gap is at its highest level for 30 years. It’s time for action, and a documentary is the most powerful way we can raise awareness and mobilise people.
Contact: http://thespiritleveldocumentary.com/
Trailer
3m; U.S.
Director: American Federation of Teachers
Synopsis: Documentary on Margaret Haley and the origins of American Federation of Teachers in Chicago, circa 1917.
80m; Ireland
Director: Risteard Ó Domhnaill
Synopsis: “The most dramatic clash of cultures in modern Ireland, the rights of farmers over their fields, and of fishermen to their fishing grounds, has come in direct conflict with one of the worlds most powerful oil companies. When the citizens look to their state to protect their rights, they find that the state has put Shell’s right to lay a pipeline over their own.
The Pipe is a story of a community tragically divided, and how they deal with a pipe that could bring economic prosperity or destruction of a way of life shared for generations.”
Contact: http://www.thepipethefilm.com/
Trailer
90m; U.S./Nepal
Director: Kan Yan
Synopsis: The story of child laborers in Nepal is a story of ethnic oppression, simple cruelty and remarkable hope. The Price of Childhood seeks to explain this phenomenon through the narratives of those who live with child labor—children, parents, owners, activists, government officials, scholars, and normal folks we meet along the way. In better understanding the situation from these various perspectives, the film aims to assist in improving the lives of those who suffer.
Contact: http://www.priceofchildhood.org/
Trailer
<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/15004778″>Price of Childhood Trailer</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/kan”>Kan Yan</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>77m; U.S.
Director: Anne Lewis & Mimi Pickering
Distributed by California Newsreel and Appalshop
Synopsis: “Anne Braden: Southern Patriot (1924-2006)” is a first person feature documentary completed May 1, 2012. Braden rejected her segregationist, privileged past to become one of the civil rights movement’s staunchest white allies. In 1954 she was charged with sedition by McCarthy-style politicians who played on fears of communism to preserve southern segregation. In 1963 she became one of only five white southerners whose contributions to the movement were commended by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his famed “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” A relentless labor and political organizer, she fought for transformation and liberation throughout her life. - http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/06/15/18715481.php
110m
Director: Gonzalo Arijon
Synopsis: In his 1971 standard work Open Veins in Latin America, Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano describes the centuries of economic exploitation of his part of the world. Almost 40 years later, Uruguayan documentary filmmaker Gonzalo Arijon reevaluates the situation in Eyes Wide Open — A Journey through Today’s South America. His search takes him from the soybean plantations of the Brazilian Amazon and the tin mines of Bolivia to the deep jungles of Ecuador. Arijon, winner of the Joris Ivens Award in 2007 for Stranded, shows how the current crop of leftist leaders in these countries are attempting to resist the squandering of natural resources by large, international companies. The principal culprits he identifies are the neoliberal ideology and the ensuing wave of privatizations. Arijon’s politically committed film allows the local populations to speak for themselves, interspersing this with archive footage of speeches by the likes of Hugo Chávez (Venezuela), Lula da Silva (Brazil), and Evo Morales (Bolivia). Galeano himself also talks — sometimes in poetic language — about how the rise of socialist governments in the early 21st century is benefitting Latin America, and what more can be done.
