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Sep 1 – Oct 9, 2025
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sestolff@gmail.com
Author Archives: Labor Film Database
May Day Workers Film Festival (San Diego, CA)
May Day Workers Film Festival
San Diego, CA
May 22-28, 2015
The May Day Workers Film Festival connects labor and social justice issues to audiences through the arts and culture. Expressing labor history and workers struggles as entertainment and education, while supporting social change movements.
Includes The Hand That Feeds (PLUS local labor shorts); 5/22/2015 4pm at the Digital Gym Cinema (2921 El Cajon Blvd. San Diego, CA 92104)
mayfirstfilms@gmail.com
Twitter @WorkersFilmFest
facebook.com/workersfilmfestival
MayWorks (Seattle)
Latest edition: May 1-27, 2018
Founded: 2012
Seattle, WA
Website
MayWorks is a four-week-long series of art exhibits, musical performances, film competitions, lectures and parades that celebrates the culture of work from the last century through today. MayWorks is dedicated to honoring the struggles of the past while inspiring those who are struggling right now. It gives voice to workers through music, art, books, and poetry—through the celebration of the culture of working people.
2018 Calendar of events
Facebook page
Contact
Washington State Labor Council
314 1st Ave W
Seattle, WA. 98121
206-281-8901
1-800-542-0904
wslc@wslc.org
Power of the People Labor Film Series
Below is the schedule for this Spring’s (2014) Power of the People Labor Film Series. All three films are scheduled for 7 p.m. in White Hall Room G09, on West Virginia University’s Downtown Campus in Morgantown, WV. As always, all films are free and open to the public.
Wednesday, February 19, 2014: 10,000 Black Men Named George (2002). Directed by Robert Townsend and featuring a strong cast including Emmy winners Andre Braugher and Charles S. Dutton, this film depicts the struggles of A. Philip Randolph and other activists to form the black-led Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in the 1920s.
Wednesday, March 19, 2014: Norma Rae (1979). Starring Sally Field, who won the Best Actress Oscar for the title role, and directed by Martin Ritt, this Oscar-nominated film focuses on the efforts of a young mother and leader at work to unionize a southern textile. It is a fictionalized version of the long and difficult battle to unionize the J.P. Stevens textile mill in North Carolina in the 1970s.
Wednesday, April 16, 2014: Cradle Will Rock (1999). Based on actual events, Cradle Will Rock recounts Orson Welles’s endeavors to stage a play about a steel strike in mid-1930s Manhattan, and the great resistance to suppress it. Weaving together radical politics with New Deal programs (such as the Federal Theater Project to which many historical figures in the film belonged) and a period of heightened labor unrest, it is directed by Tim Robbins and boasts a star-studded cast including Hank Azaria, Vanessa Redgrave, John Cusack, Ruben Blades, Susan Sarandon, and Bill Murray.
Jason Kozlowski, Assistant Professor
Institute for Labor Studies and Research
West Virginia University
719 Knapp Hall
P.O. Box 6031
Morgantown, WV 26506-6031
(304) 293-5790
Jason.Kozlowski@mail.wvu.edu
Progressive Film Club*
Dublin, Ireland
(2026) Inactive.
Voluntary organisation dedicated to showing progressive films from all over the world. Struggles for people’s rights, for the rights of workers, of immigrants, of women, for national liberation and for social justice are some of the themes of the outstanding films we have selected. Showings—usually one all-day show per month—were at the New Theatre in East Essex Street (43 East Essex Street • Dublin 2)
http://www.progressivefilmclub.ie/
NOTE: bad website (2/2026)
Robert Navan microbe@eircom.net
*while not exclusively a labor film festival, the Progressive Film Club’s focus on progressive issues ensures that many of its screenings include films about work, workers and workers issues.
North West Labour Film Festival
Update (2022): connected to London Labour Film festival; check there or on the Facebook page below.
Facebook page
4-9 NOVEMBER 2017
LIVERPOOL, England
The North West Labour Film Festival 2017 celebrates national and international cinema on the big screen from Saturday 4th November through to Thursday 9th November in Liverpool. We provide quality entertainment with social awareness, offering a bright and sensitive look at the world of work.
Our Labour Film Festivals are supported by the TUC and the trade union movement in the UK including our main sponsors Unite and Unison.
Our festival encourages creativity and supports the dissemination of audiovisual works that contain stories about work and workers, giving importance to their point of view of the world and to social issues affecting their daily lives, those of their families and the communities to which they belong.
info@londonlabourfilmfest.com
info@northwestlabourfilmfest.com
San Pedro (CA) Labor Fest
Latest: July 5-8, 2012
Founded: 2012
Synopsis: A celebration of Labor through Film, Art & Music in venues throughout Downtown San Pedro, featuring works by artists in and about the Labor Movement. All events are open to the public.
Contact: sanpedrolaborfest@gmail.com
Facebook
(310) 941-7395
Alethea (2007)
Director: Petra Holzer & Ethem Ozguven | Producer: Petra Holzer & Ethem Ozguven
Genre: Documentary | Produced In: 2007 | Story Teller’s Country: Turkey
Synopsis: Since the year of 1989, multinational mining companies have been coming to Turkey in order to mine gold using the cyanide leaching process. Eurogold, an Australian and Canadian joint venture, is one of them. Their mine is situated in Bergama. The people living in Bergama and the 17 surrounding villages started to resist the project. The people won all the instances of their legal struggle. However, the mine still operates. The story of “Alethea” is about the people and their long struggle. We followed their struggle since 1996.
Genre: Documentary | Produced In: 2007 | Story Teller’s Country: Turkey
Synopsis: Since the year of 1989, multinational mining companies have been coming to Turkey in order to mine gold using the cyanide leaching process. Eurogold, an Australian and Canadian joint venture, is one of them. Their mine is situated in Bergama. The people living in Bergama and the 17 surrounding villages started to resist the project. The people won all the instances of their legal struggle. However, the mine still operates. The story of “Alethea” is about the people and their long struggle. We followed their struggle since 1996.
http://www.cultureunplugged.com/play/4451/Alethea
Working for a Living: Labor on Film
UVM Film Series 
University of Vermont, Burlington, VT
January 23-April 17, 2014
NOTE: the series theme shifts each year so this is not an ongoing labor film series
A UVM Film and Television Studies faculty member will introduce the director and formal aspects of each film in a 30-minute lecture, and lead a post-screening Q + A for the audience. The UVM Film Series will take place at the Billings Lecture Hall.
Office Space (Mark Judge, 1999) January 23 / Pre-film Lecture 6 PM / Film Screening 6:45 PM
Salt of the Earth (Herbert J. Biberman, 1954) February 20 / Pre-film Lecture 6 PM / Film Screening 6:45 PM
Fast, Cheap & Out of Control (Errol Morris, 1997) March 20 / Pre-film Lecture 6 PM / Film Screening 6:45 PM
The Front (Martin Ritt, 1976) April 17 / Pre-film Lecture 6 PM / Film Screening 6:45 PM
University of Vermont
Lane Series
322 South Prospect Street
Burlington, VT 05401
802.656.4455
lane.series@uvm.edu
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