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Author Archives: Labor Film Database

2016 Global Labor Film Festival (4th annual)

Twelve films, eight cities and four countries comprise the fourth annual Global Labor Film Festival.

The Global Labor Film Festival is organized by labor film festivals around the world who each screen a labor-themed film of their choice during the month of May, chosen because May 1 — International Workers’ Day — is a national holiday in more than 80 countries and celebrated unofficially in many other countries.

The Global Labor Film Festival showcases the growing worldwide scope of nearly three dozen film festivals focused on films about work, workers and their issues and was first conceived at the second annual International Conference of Labor Film Festival Organizers at the 2012 DC Labor FilmFest, both of which are organized by the Metro Washington Council, AFL-CIO.

Anyone doing labor-themed screenings in May – or interested in doing so in 2016 — is welcome to join the Global Labor Film Festival; email streetheat@dclabor.org

2016 Global Labor Film Festival participants
Barre, Vermont: May 22: How Green is My Valley; Old Socialist Labor Party Hall
Buenos Aires, Argentina: May 5: La Mujer de Barro (The Mud Woman); Construir Cine International Film Festival About Work
Campinas, Brazil: May 04: Greediness; Brazilian International Labour Film Festival / Mostra CineTrabalho
Honolulu, Hawaii: May 1: Where To Invade Next & Hole Hole Bushi: Hawaiian/Japanese Canfield Songs; LaborFest Hawaii
London, England: May 8 Jose Marti: The Eyes of the Canary; London Socialist Film Co-Op
Marília, Brazil: May 24: Active Life; Brazilian International Labour Film Festival / Mostra CineTrabalho
New York City, New York: May 11: A Bold Peace, Thailand’s Seafood Slaves, & Limpiadores: Workers Unite Film Festival
Santa Cruz, CA: May 1: When Voices Meet; Reel Work May Day Labor Film Festival
Washington, DC: May 23: Joe Hill; DC Labor FilmFest

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Posted by Labor Film Database on April 29, 2016 in AA: Global Labor Film Festival 2016

Pyme (2004) (SMB)

03 Feb

Directed by: Alejandro Malowiki PYME
Running Time: 96 minutes.
Starring: Gabriel Molinelli, Duilio Orso, Bernardo Forteza.

www.pymelapelicula.com.ar

SMB (Pyme) is a fiction full length film that tells the slings and arrows of life within a plastic industry factory when its owner takes the dramatic and imminent decision to declare bankruptcy, thus leading to the factory’s closure, or calling a meeting of creditors as a last hope. A hope that, at the end of the film, will be crystallized as a cooperative. Pablo, in charge of the factory founded by his father, tries to face the conflicts that have disturbed all members of his SMB in Argentina, in the ’90s. Hounded by debts, they end up bearing an economic crisis that gives place to an undesired and unexpected war of everyone against everyone. They are under siege by a brutal and unfair neoliberal model. Gustavo, Pablo’s son, may become the only one who will dare go through the door that keeps opening and closing, preventing them from seeing the outside light.

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Posted by Labor Film Database on February 3, 2016 in Big Business/Corporations, Communism/Socialism, Drama, Global Economy, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Manufacturing

La Demolicion (2005) (The Demolition)

03 Feb

Year: 2006
Genre: Comedy.
Country: Argentina.
Format: Color.
Running Time: 78 minutes.
Original Title: La Demolición.

Directed by: Marcelo Mangone
Written by: Ricardo Cardoso / Marcelo Mangone
Photography: Martín Nico

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oCvZTJh52U

Based on a theatrical piece, it tells the story of a man tenacious about defending his company while, at the same time, another man shows up with the mission to destroy it. Osvaldo Lazzari undergoes precarious working conditions at a company that deals with the demolition of abandoned buildings. His boss has put him in charge of supervising the pulling down of an old textile factory where a big supermarket is meant to be built.
During the previous routine inspection, Lazzari finds an unexpected occupant in the building: Alberto Luna, a former employee obsessed with making the factory work again, who thinks that Lazzari has come to the company in order to reactivate production. And, as if that weren’t bad enough, police agents, promotional staff, the press staff and his own wife will turn poor Lazzari‘s situation even more difficult.

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Posted by Labor Film Database on February 3, 2016 in Comedy, Construction Trades, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Manufacturing

Industria Argentina (2011) (Argentine Industry)

03 Feb

INDUSTRIA ARGENTINA

Directed by: Ricardo Díaz Iacoponi
Country: Argentina.
Running Time: 96 minutes.
Starring: Aymará Rovera, Carlos Portaluppi, Cutuli.
http://www.indargentina-film.com.ar/indexar.html

Trailer: http://indargentina-film.com.ar/trailer.html

At Arlumar, a spare parts factory, workers resist to lose their only means of earning their living. Juan, as well as many other employees, has not collected his salaries for months. His pregnant wife and his debts make him foresee a very dark future ahead. Little by little, taking control of their desperation, Juan and his coworkers begin to organize themselves to keep running the company that has been abandoned by its owners. In that way, they assume the rebuilding of a company that has no employers, which proves to be a heavy burden to carry.

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Posted by Labor Film Database on February 3, 2016 in Drama, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Manufacturing, Unemployment-Wages, Working Class

La Cola (The Line)

03 Feb

The Line is a drama from Argentina. Written and directed by Enrique Liporace and Ezequiel C. Inzaghi, starring renowned Argentine acting professionals such as Alejandro Awada, Lucrecia Oviedo, Ana María Picchio and Antonio Gasalla.

The Line focuses on the experiences of Félix Cayetano Gómez, who lives in the city of Buenos Aires and has to scramble daily to make ends meet. This man discovers a way to earn money by waiting in lines to run different errands or do paperwork for other people, in exchange of a sum of money.

But Félix is not the only one who works as a “line man”, there are many others doing the same job and all of them dream about forming an employee’s union that can group and protect them.

At some point in the story, those other workers reveal to Félix a criminal plan that would allow him to collect much more money: it is related to waiting in lines to do education, health and work related paperwork. As a consequence of his job, the main character will become a witness and an accomplice of a tragic but comical reality that will also affect his own life.

Original Title: La cola.
Starring: Alejandro Awada, Lucrecia Oviedo, Antonio Gasalla, Ana María Piccio.
Genre: Drama.
Directed by: Enrique Liporace, Ezequiel C. Inzaghi.
Country of Origin: Argentina.
Running Time: 99 minutes.
Rated: PG-13
Released in Buenos Aires: September 13th, 2012.
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-_73RuRg_w

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Posted by Labor Film Database on February 3, 2016 in Crime-Action, Drama, Self-Employed/Freelance

Evelyn Williams

06 Dec

Directed by Anne Lewis, USA, Appalshop,1995 (28 minutes)
https://store.appalshop.org/shop/appalshop-films/evelyn-williams/

Evelyn Williams is a portrait of a woman who is many things: a coal miner’s daughter and wife; a domestic worker and mother of nine; a college student in her 50s and community organizer; an Appalachian African American. Above all, she is a woman whose awareness of class and race oppression has led her to a lifetime of activism. Now in her 80s, she is battling to save her land in eastern Kentucky from destruction by a large oil and gas firm.
With humor, eloquence, and at times anger, Evelyn tells her story. Her family came to eastern Kentucky in 1922 when she was six years old. She remembers the Klan burning a cross on the mountain and describes the sense of powerlessness that followed a lynching for which the murderers were never arrested. She married a coal miner and later moved to West Virginia where her daughters were able to attend college.While her husband worked in the mines and helped organize the union, she cleaned the homes of coal company bosses. When the mines mechanized and laid off workers, the family moved to Brooklyn, N.Y. where Evelyn studied at the New School for Social Research and became active in efforts to improve her community. Her commitment to fight for justice and equality was deepened when her son was killed in Vietnam and the U.S. military misinformed and mistreated the family. Following retirement in the early 70′s, Evelyn and her husband returned to a piece of family land in Kentucky. Most recently, she has been a leader of a grassroots effort by Kentuckians for the Commonwealth to end oil and gas company use of the broadform deed to drill on surface owners’ land without their permission. In explaining her determination to preserve her land, she recalls her grandfather, an ex-slave, who said, “Take care of the land. Take care of the land. As long as you have land, you have a belonging.” The program portrays a fascinating and dynamic personality whose keen sense of communal and family history influences her determination. Through her story, Evelyn makes important connections between civil rights, women’s rights, and environmental concerns.

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Posted by Labor Film Database on December 6, 2015 in Class, Documentary, Environment, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Women, Working Class

Deep Down: a story from the heart of coal country

06 Dec

Directed by Jen Gilomen and Sally Rubin, USA, Fine Line Films,
2010 (57 minutes) website

Beverly May and Terry Ratliff grew up like kin on opposite sides of a mountain ridge in eastern Kentucky. Now in their fifties, the two find themselves in the midst of a debate dividing their community and the world: who controls, consumes, and benefits from our planet’s shrinking supply of natural resources?
While Beverly organizes her neighbors and leads a legal fight to stop Miller Brothers Coal Company from advancing into her hollow, Terry considers signing away the mining rights to his backyard—a decision that could destroy not only the two friends’ homes, but the peace and environment surrounding their community. The two friends soon find themselves caught in the middle of a contentious battle over energy and the wealth and environmental destruction it represents.

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Posted by Labor Film Database on December 6, 2015 in Documentary, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Safety & Health, Women

Anti-Unionol

06 Dec

AFSCME, USA, 2013 (2 minutes)

DRASTICALLY REDUCES ECONOMIC EQUALITY AND THE MIDDLE CLASS.
10/10 CEOS RECOMMEND ANTI-UNIONOL TO THEIR WORKERS.
TIME-RELEASED EFFECTS ENSURE THAT THE 1% CONTINUE TO TAKE IN A GREATER SHARE OF THE NATION’S WEALTH.
FAST-ACTING FORMULA DECIMATES WAGES AND BENEFITS AND A SECURE RETIREMENT!
CERTIFIED AND APPROVED BY KOCH BROTHERS LABORATORIES.