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Author Archives: Labor Film Database

ASOTRECOL, The Struggle Against Transnationals in Colombia

(55 min.) 2013, Colombia
With tactics ranging from hunger strikes with lips stitched shut to a nearly 1,000-day sit-in at the U.S. Embassy, Colombian workers are putting the world’s attention on General Motors’ treatment of its workers. This film tells the incredible story of an association of injured workers who have taken on one of the most powerful corporations in the world, and have won victories they never thought were possible. The Obama administration pushed the US Colombian trade agreement with the argument that it would protect the workers of Colombia from assassinations and repression because of labor protections. Since the agreement was passed by the Congress and signed by President Obama the repression continues and US corporations like GM and Coca-Cola continue to injure and terrorize Colombian workers.

Injured workers from Asotrecol have also come to the United States to the headquarters of General Motors to demand justice and have not received justice. The UAW which owned shares in General Motors have also been silent about the treatment of the Colombian GM workers and the struggle continues.

 

Miners Shot Down (2014)

(85 min) 2014 by Rehad Desai (South Africa)

In August 2012, mineworkers in one of South Africa’s biggest platinum mines began a wildcat strike for better wages. Six days later the police used live ammunition to brutally suppress the strike, killing 34 and injuring many more. Using the point of view of the Marikana miners, Miners Shot Down follows the strike from day one, showing the courageous but isolated fight waged by a group of low-paid workers against the combined forces of the mining company Lonmin, the ANC government and their allies in the National Union of Mineworkers.  What emerges is collusion at the top, spiraling violence and the country’s first post-apartheid massacre. South Africa will never be the same again.
Film Website

 

The Grand Seduction (2013)

The small harbor of Tickle Cove is in dire need of a doctor so that the town can land a contract to secure a factory which will save the town from financial ruin. Village resident Murray French (Gleeson) leads the search, and when he finds Dr. Paul Lewis (Kitsch) he employs – along with the whole town – tactics to seduce the doctor to stay permanently.

 

Price Check (2012)

For Pete, settling down with a wife and son meant giving up his unstable musical career to work for a third-rate supermarket chain.

Cast: Parker PoseyEric MabiusAnnie Parisse

 

Twin Cities Assembly Plant: A Job and a Family

  • Format: DVD Video, 40 min., with bonus 14 min. slideshow
  • Publisher: Labor Education Service, U of MN
  • Usually ships in: 1 to 3 business days
  • Product ##: 7517

The history of the Twin Cities Ford Assembly Plant, United Auto Workers Local 879 and the unique community of workers in St. Paul’s Highland Park neighborhood.

Since 1925, Ford Motor Company has operated a manufacturing plant on the banks of the Mississippi River in Saint Paul’s Highland Park neighborhood, employing thousands of workers. This documentary tells the history of the Twin Cities Assembly Plant, United Auto Workers Local 879 and the unique community both hourly and salaried workers created inside and outside the factory.

$20; order here: http://shop.mnhs.org/moreinfo.cfm?product_id=2607

 

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Another Promise (2014)

original title: Another Family

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoDM1d8aqJ4
  

Based on a true story of a working-class family whose daughter went to work at Samsung semiconductor factory, contracted leukemia during her time there and died from the disease in 2007.

Crowd-Sourced Film on Samsung Debuts
http://blogs.wsj.com/korearealtime/2013/10/09/crowd-sourced-film-on-samsung-debuts/

 

Popieluszko – Freedom Is Within Us

Another contemporary take on a life story on  early-‘Solidarity’ union hero;  more about struggle for freedom than labour struggles
In 1984 Jerzy Popiełuszko, widely known as the “Solidarność-Priest” for his role in the resistance against communism, was murdered by agents of the Polish internal intelligence agency. This film debut attracted over 1,3 million cinema viewers in Poland.
http://www.filmfestivalcottbus.de/en/archive/2012/films/pgm_id=1296&film_id=970&seite=3

 

Black Thursday (CZARNY CZWARTEK)

by Antoni Krauze (Poland) –  contemporary take on the tragic events when Gdansk shipyard workers were killed by police during strike of December 1970 – got a FIPRESCI PRIZE (FIPRESCI Prize for a film in the World Competition) award at 37th Montreal World Film Festival.

Still a painfully remembered event, the brutally suppressed shipyard strikes of December 1970 get a stirring, street-level dramatization from Antoni Krauze that focuses on the tragic story of Brunon Drywa and family. When protests spread among coastal towns, troops in Gdynia responded by firing on people on their way to work; the victims would include Drywa, who was shot in the back. Filming on historic locations in Gdynia, Krauze forcefully brings to the screen a rarely depicted yet pivotal chapter in Polish history.

 

Women’s Day (Dzien Kobiet)

Halina is promoted to store manager of the supermarket chain „Motylek“ („Butterfly“). But her life as chief is just transient when she finds herself being abandoned by the system for being overly humane. Social-critical feature film debut by the famous Polish musician Maria Sadowska.’ The chains’ name ‘Butterfly’ is a paraphrase of an existing Portuguese-owned chain of discount supermarkets in Poland, which were infamous for the treatment of the workforce until unionised by NSZZ “Solidarność”
http://www.filmfestivalcottbus.de/en/archive/2012/films/pgm_id=1269&film_id=992&seite=3

 

Ann Kore Moun – Collective Action: A Force For Development

(André Vanasse & Jean-Nathan Aristil, 2012, 36 min) Unions in many sectors of Haitian society and their role in economic development.
http://www.productionsbonsai.com