Brad Lichtenstein
US, documentary
83m
http://asgoesjanesville.com/
Goes to the front lines over the future of America’s middle class – by insightfully tracking the recent battle over union rights in Wisconsin, and by focusing on the hometown of the former Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan. First, General Motors shut down Janesville’s century-old auto plant, leading to massive layoffs. Then, newly elected governor Scott Walker ignited a firestorm by ending collective bargaining and unleashing a protest movement that led to his recall election. Director Brad Lichtenstein followed the lives of Janesville’s auto workers for over three years, as they tried to save their jobs.
<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/53693696″>”As Goes Janesville” Official Theatrical Trailer</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/371productions”>371 Productions</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>53m; U.S.
Director: Jenny Rohrer, Greg LeRoy
Synopsis: In 1864, George Pullman began selling his famous railroad sleeping cars which helped him build a vast industrial empire that was supposed to last forever. In 1981, however, Pullman workers found themselves in the midst of a fight not only for their jobs but the future of the American rail car industry. One hundred years of government, union and corporate policies are traced in this engaging story.
Contact: Available from New Day Films 22 Riverview Drive, Wayne, NJ 07470.
40m; U.S.
Director: Steve Bognar & Julia Reichert
Synopsis: An intimate look at the final days of a General Motors Plant in Moraine, Ohio, and the lives of the workers affected by its closing.
Synopsis: Film discusses the closing of the Chicago Stockyards, black struggles with union, history of work in yards, ethnic backgrounds.
15m; U.S.
Director: Mary Filippo
Synopsis: Veteran experimental filmmaker Mary Filippo tackles issues of work, class and gender roles in this visually captivating and provocative autobiographical piece. At the core of this engaging autobiographical piece is an interview with Filippo’s mother, as she recounts incidents of exploitation and gender discrimination she experienced working in jewelry factories in the 1940’s and 50’s. The filmmaker contrasts her mother’s quiet acquiescence with her own attitudes about social injustices of her culture through a striking montage of images and audio clips—moving the viewer to consider connections between consumerism and global labor practices, motherhood, money and happiness. - http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/pages/c615.shtml
122m; Brazil
Director: Leon Hirszman
Cast: Gianfrancesco Guarnieri, Fernanda Montenegro and Carlos Alberto Riccelli
Synopsis (NYT): At the beginning of the Brazilian film “They Don’t Wear Black Tie,” a middle-class boy and girl are making plans to live happily ever after. Maria (Bete Mendes) is pregnant by the handsome young Tiao (Carlos Alberto Ricelli), and that helps accelerate their plan to rush into marriage. Everything looks rosy. “They Don’t Wear Black Tie” is an extremely successful politically aware drama about how the bloom falls off the rose . . . The film chronicles the process by which Maria realizes that Tiao is not the man she thought he was. Her understanding of Tiao’s weakness is heightened by the political activity surrounding a local strike, at the factory where Tiao, his father and Maria are all employed. When the labor trouble begins, Tiao manfully wanrs Maria that she’d better stay home, exhibiting just the hind of stubborn sexism this courageous heroine refuses to tolerate. Later on, he violates the most basic tenets of his upbringing by becoming a scab. And Maria declares that her child will be bery, very proud of his grandfather, even if he never has a kind thought about his father at all.
“They Don’t Wear Black Tie” is an outstandingly good film in this year’s New Directors/New Films lineup.
2007 35 mins. Joe Hodges
A second glass plant existed right across the street from LOF on MacCorkle Ave. SE in the Kanawha City section of Charleston. This plant became the largest producer of glass bottles in the world by the 1930s. In 1917, just one year after the LOF plant was founded, the Owens-Illinois Company began manufacturing fruit jars, jars for industrial products, and after Prohibition ended, beer bottles. This film tells the story of WV native son Michael Joseph Owens, the inventor of the bottle-making machine that revolutionized the glass industry worldwide. Photos of workers are shown, and videotape-showing reunions are included. The plant closed in 1963. Many workers at this plant would walk across the street and work at the LOF plant when things were slow.
Access: Joseph D. Hodges, 5426 Lancaster Ave. SE, Charleston, WV 25304, 925-1819, joe1819@suddenlink.net or David Radford, 2950 Pine St., Belle, WV, 595-1090. The WV State Archives has copies of both films LOF and OI films, made available to reseachers. Copies of both LOF and OI glass factory films should be available from WVLC and KCPL in summer 2009.
33m; U.S.
Director: Michael Martini
81m; Germany
Director: Holger Wayman
Synopsis: In May 2005, the Bosch-Siemens workers in Berlin who produce Siemens household appliances were threatened with the closure of their factory and the loss of 600 jobs.
Contact: http://www.videowerkstatt.de/ autofocus@videowerkstatt.de Holger Wayman: howeg@hotmail.de
