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Author Archives: Labor Film Database

42: Forty Two Up (1998)

30 Oct

139m; UK
Director: Michael Apted
Stars: Bruce Balden, Jacqueline Bassett and Symon Basterfield

The Up Series is a series of documentary films produced by Granada Television that have followed the lives of fourteen British children since 1964, when they were seven years old. The documentary has had seven episodes spanning 49 years and the documentary has been broadcast on both ITV and BBC. In a 2005 Channel 4 programme, the series topped the list of The 50 Greatest Documentaries. The children were selected to represent the range of socio-economic backgrounds in Britain at that time, with the explicit assumption that each child’s social class predetermines their future. Every seven years, the director, Michael Apted, films new material from as many of the fourteen as he can get to participate. According to Apted, 56 Up is expected to have its broadcast premiere from 13 to 15 May 2012
– Wikipedia

 
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Posted by on October 30, 2011 in Documentary, Working Class

 

35 Up (1991)

30 Oct

128m; UK
Director: Michael Apted
Stars: Bruce Balden, Jacqueline Bassett and Symon Basterfield

Documentary tracking group of British people of different classes.

“If there’s ever been a more telling indictment that, indeed, the poor stay poor and the rich get rich, I haven’t found it. 35 Up is nothing less than a bleak yet scathing documentary skewering the class structure of Britain.”
Christopher Null

 
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Posted by on October 30, 2011 in Documentary, Working Class

 

30 Days – Working In A Coal Mine (2008)

30 Oct

55M; U.S.
Director: Morgan Spurlock
Cast: Morgan Spurlock

30 Days TV series (FX) creator Morgan Spurlock returns to his home state of West Virginia, to work as a rookie apprentice coalminer known as a “redhat” for 30 days. He also takes a little time to socialize with the miners and their families, and briefly explores the problems of mountaintop removal mining and the destruction of both the environment and the coal miners’ health.

 
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Posted by on October 30, 2011 in Documentary, Working Class

 

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24 Hours in Tyrantland (1959)

30 Oct

30m; U.S.
Directed by Peter Tewksbury
Starring Robert Young, Jane Wyatt & rest of the Father Knows Best cast

Tells the story of Springfield under the control of a tyrannical despot. The Father Knows Best TV series became such a part of American pop-culture that in 1959 the U.S. Treasury Department commissioned a 30-minute episode called “24 Hours in Tyrant land”, with all production costs paid for by the AFL-CIO and actors and staff contributing their talents. Never aired, it was designed to be distributed to schools, churches and civic groups to promote the buying of savings bonds. (This very rare episode is on the Father Knows Best Season One DVD.)

“Unlike the weekly broadcast episodes of Father Knows Best, the point of this episode was not to entertain. No, the purpose of ‘Tyrantland’ was to save America from certain, inevitable communist rule via the sale of US savings bonds. The program’s sales pitch is a deadly serious and heavy-handed one. Its themes and morals are thickly applied, and now comes across quite quaint, if not downright silly. In short, Tyrantland has not aged well. But, it should be said, the film, perhaps due to the strong convictions and seriousness of everyone involved in its making, has not completely de-evolved into a laugh out loud, camp classic like Duck and Cover or Reefer Madness or other antiquated morality tales. Nevertheless, Tyrantland remains a powerful reflector of a profound national mood.”
– Cary O’Dell 

 
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Posted by on October 30, 2011 in Comedy

 

24 Days in Brooks (2009)

29 Oct

24m; Canada
Director: Dana Inkster

In a decade, tiny Brooks, Alberta has been transformed from a socially conservative, primarily Caucasian town to one of the most diverse places in Canada. Hijabs have become commonplace, downtown bars feature calypso and residents speak 90 different languages. Immigrants and refugees have flocked here to work at Lakeside Packers – one of the world’s largest slaughterhouses. Centering on the 24 days of the first-ever strike at Lakeside, this film is a nuanced portrait of people working together and adapting to change. They are people like Peter Jany Khwai, who escaped war in Sudan, wears an African shirt and a cowboy hat, and affirms his Canadian identity as well as his determination to fight for his rights. Or Edil Hassan, a devout Muslim born in Somalia, who counts her hours of organizing and picketing among her proudest moments. As 24 Days in Brooks shows, people from widely different backgrounds can work together for respect, dignity, and change – even though getting there is not easy.

24 Days in Brooks was produced as part of the Reel Diversity Competition for emerging filmmakers of colour. Reel Diversity is a National Film Board of Canada initiative in partnership with CBC Newsworld. The DVD includes the original English version of the film and the English version with French subtitles.
Contact Info: http://www.onf-nfb.gc.ca/eng/collection/film/?id=56986

 
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Posted by on October 29, 2011 in Documentary, Immigrants/Immigration, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

24 City (Er shi si cheng ji) (2008)

29 Oct

112m; China
Director: Jia Zhangke
Stars: Jianbin Chen, Joan Chen and Liping Lü

Follows three generations of characters in Chengdu (in the 1950s, the 1970s and the present day) as a state-owned factory gives way to a modern apartment complex.
Cinema Guild, Ryan Krivoshey: rkrivoshey@cinemaguild.com

“Change and a city in China. In Chengdu, factory 420 is being pulled down to make way for multi-story buildings with luxury flats. Scenes of factory operations, of the workforce, and of buildings stripped bare and then razed, are inter-cut with workers who were born in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s telling their stories – about the factory, which manufactured military aircraft, and about their work and their lives. A middle-aged man visits his mentor, now elderly; a woman talks of being a 19-year-old beauty there and ending up alone. The film concludes with two young people talking, each the child of workers, each relaying a story of one visit to a factory. Times change.” IMDB; written by <jhailey@hotmail.com>

 
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Posted by on October 29, 2011 in Drama, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Working Class

 

2040: An Equal Pay Odyssey (2009)

25 Oct

90m; UK
Director: Gary Williams

It’s 40 years since the Equal Pay Act, but when will the gender pay gap close?

Contact: G.Williams@unison.co.uk

 
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Posted by on October 25, 2011 in Documentary, Women

 

19: Victoria, Texas (2006)

25 Oct

4m; US
Director: Dolissa Medina

Experimental short film about undocumented immigrants who died while trapped inside a tractor near the town of Victoria, Texas.

 
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Posted by on October 25, 2011 in Documentary, Immigrants/Immigration

 

1900 (Novecento) (1977)

25 Oct

245m; Italy
Director: Bernardo Bertolucci
Starring: Robert De Niro, Gérard Depardieu and Dominique Sanda

Set in Italy, the film follows the lives and interactions of two boys/men, one born a bastard of peasant stock (Depardieu), the other born to a land owner (de Niro). The drama spans from 1900 to about 1945, and focuses mainly on the rise of Fascism and the peasants’ eventual reaction by supporting Communism, and how these events shape the destinies of the two main characters.

 
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Posted by on October 25, 2011 in Drama, Working Class

 

1877: Grand Army of Starvation (1987)

25 Oct

30m; US (click above for excerpt)
James Earl Jones narrates the first film made by the American Social History Project’s series on American working people and U.S. history. Using rare documents and pictures, it explores the massive national railroad strikes of 1877, a watershed event in Pittsburgh and U.S. history

 

 
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Posted by on October 25, 2011 in Documentary, Drama, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts, Transportation

 
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