RSS

Author Archives: iwwggrandson

Union Maids (1976)

13 Jun

48m; U.S.

Director: Julia Reichert, James Klein and Miles Mogulescu

Synopsis: Traces the organizing activities of three working class women in the laundry, meat packing and garment industries in Chicago in the 1930s. Features the oral histories of 3 women labor activists involved in the workers’ movements in the early 1930s: Kate Hyndman, Stella Nowicki, and Sylvia Woods. The women are figures of dignity and beauty amid their experiences of social injustice.

Nominated for an Oscar in 1978 for best feature documentary, and winner in 1978 of the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics’ “Critics Award” for Best Short.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Collective Bargaining, Documentary, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Labor History, Organizing, Streaming Online (Youtube, Vimeo), Textile Industry, Women

 

Tags:

Union with a Heart (1974)

13 Jun

18m; U.S. 

Director: Brewery Workers Union

Synopsis: Celebrates the 75th anniversary of the Brewery Workers Union

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Collective Bargaining, Documentary, Labor History

 

Tags:

United Action: Story of the GM Tool & Die Strike 1939 (1940)

13 Jun

33m; U.S.

Director: Michael Martini

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Documentary, Labor History, Manufacturing, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

Unionism: From Journeymen Associations to the Teamsters (1980)

13 Jun

29m; U.S.

Synopsis: Educational film tracing the history of labor and the Teamsters.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Documentary, Labor History

 

Tags:

Up to a Certain Point (Hasta cierto punto) [1983]

13 Jun

68m; Cuba

Director: Tomás Gutiérrez Alea

Cast: Óscar Álvarez, Mirta Ibarra and Omar Valdés

Synopsis (IMDB): A theater director and script-writer falls for a female worker from the Havana docks, but his machismo, social and working conflicts, and the Cuban woman’s condition interfere with their relationship.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Drama, Women, Working Class

 

Up the Ridge (2007)

13 Jun

55m; U.S.

Director: Nick Szuberla and Amelia Kirby

Synopsis: In 1999 Szuberla and Kirby were volunteer DJ’s for the Appalachian region’s only hip-hop radio program in Whitesburg, KY when they received hundreds of letters from inmates transferred into nearby Wallens Ridge, the region’s newest prison built to prop up the shrinking coal economy. The letters described human rights violations and racial tension between staff and inmates. Filming began that year and, though the lens of Wallens Ridge State Prison, the program offers viewers an in-depth look at the United States prison industry and the social impact of moving hundreds of thousands of inner-city minority offenders to distant rural outposts. The film explores competing political agendas that align government policy with human rights violations, and political expediencies that bring communities into racial and cultural conflict with tragic consequences. Connections exist, in both practice and ideology, between human rights violations in Abu Ghraib and physical and sexual abuse recorded in American prisons.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Documentary, Legal System

 

Tags:

Up In The Air (2010)

13 Jun

108m; U.S.

Director: Jason Reitman

Cast: George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick

Synopsis: With a job that has him traveling around the country firing people, Ryan Bingham leads an empty life out of a suitcase, until his company does the unexpected: ground him.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Drama, Unemployment-Wages, White Collar

 

Uprooted: Refugees of the Global Economy

13 Jun

28m;

Synopsis: The compelling tale of those forced by the global economy to leave their home countries.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Documentary, Global Economy, Migrant workers

 

Uprising of 1934

13 Jun

How could such a pivotal moment in American history be kept a secret for 60 years? Textile workers recall with pride the long-supressed story of the General Textile Strike of 1934 when 500,000 Southern mill laborers walked off their jobs. George Stoney, Judith Helfand and Susanne Rostock’s probing film explores how the strike still impacts labor, power and economics in the South today.
http://www.pbs.org/pov/uprisingof34/

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Documentary, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts, Textile Industry

 

Useless (Wu yong) [2007]

13 Jun

80m; China

Director: Zhang Ke Jia

Cast: Ke Ma

Synopsis: Portrait of the unusual Chinese fashion designer Ma Ke, who incorporates the natural process of growth and decay in her clothes. But Jia goes further: in an elegant way he juxtaposes Ma Ke with mass production, but also places her in the tradition of small village dressmakers. Part two in his ‘Trilogy of Artists’.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Documentary

 

Tags:

← Older posts
Newer posts →