56m; U.S.
Director: Vanessa Gould
This unusual 56-minute documentary features stunning art created by folding single sheets of paper; introduces ten artists, some with serious scientific credentials; and shows fascinating links between science and art. Will be shown on PBS’ Independent Lens in December, 2009. See the film’s web site for other screenings.
101m; U.K.
Director: Gurinder Chadha
Cast: Kim Vithana, Jimmi Harkishin and Sarita Khajuria
Synopsis (IMDB): A group of women, of East Indian origin, mostly Punjabi-speaking, settled in Great Britain, decide to hire a bus and take a day off. They decide to go a beach resort. In the early hours of the morning, they gather together, and get ready for the ride on the bus. This is a day none of them will forget and some will even cherish for the rest of their lives, as events unfold, and each woman must use her individual strength to face the challenges of their life – even during an outing on the beach
U.S.
Director: Ravi Kumar
Cast: Martin Sheen, Mischa Barton and Kal Penn
Synopsis: The story follows a young rickshaw-puller in Bhopal who gets a menial job at a chemical plant, but in December of 1984 a chemical spill in India takes the lives of almost 15,000 people and injuring more than 100,000. The film follows how the industrial disaster in the city changes his life and those of others. Stories of people in India and US as they face dilemmas of life time in the months leading to the biggest Industrial disaster in human history.
Contact: Serotonin Films + (0) 207 494 8293 Dominic Norris: dominic@serotoninfilms.com 4 Great Chapel Street, London, W1F 8FD, United Kingdom
40m; South Korea
Director: Labor News Production
Synopsis: Samsung’s surveillance of workers outside workplace
Contact: www.lnp89.org
83m; Brazil
Director: Carlos Diegues
Cast: Leonardo Villar, Anecy Rocha, Antonio Pitanga, Joel Barcellos, Sérgio Bernardes, Hugo Carvana
Synopsis: Luzia comes from the backwoods of Northeast Brazil to Rio de Janeiro, in search of her fiancé. But soon she’ll find out he has turned into a dangerous criminal and is being looked after by the police.
77m
Director: Ken Loach
Broadcast Date: February 19,1969
Network: BBC1
Synopsis (BFI): ‘The Big Flame’ was writer Jim Allen‘s second Wednesday Play (BBC, 1964-70), and his first with director Kenneth Loach. After ‘The Lump’ (tx. 1/2/1967), about the exploitation of casual labour in the building trade, Allen used his Marxist credentials to depict striking Liverpool dockers enacting a Communist-style system of workers’ control.
The play was filmed in Loach‘s accustomed drama-documentary format, honed on previous Wednesday Plays like ‘Up the Junction’ (tx. 3/11/1965) and ‘Cathy Come Home’ (tx. 16/11/1966). Real dockers appear, and the actors speak not well-rehearsed lines but in the disjointed, often incoherent, manner of authentic speech. It is captured on murky 16mm film, giving the picture the same quality as contemporaneous newsreel footage. Only the occasional voiceovers diverge from the apparent objectivity of this fly-on-the-wall aesthetic.
Allen‘s script is remarkably prophetic; it foreshadowed Britain’s massive industrial unrest of 1973-4 and its conclusion prefigures the explosive clash of worker and state in the miners’ strike of 1984. Although they would work together frequently, Loach considered ‘The Big Flame’ to be Allen‘s “definitive script”.
The mix of radical politics and the documentary approach proved incendiary. Anticipating controversy, the BBC postponed the play’s transmission twice. When finally screened, it was labelled a “Marxist play presented as sermon” by the Daily Mail and it rekindled the press’s vociferous interest in the ongoing debate about television drama-documentary.
Mary Whitehouse, secretary of the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association, complained that the play was “a blueprint for the communist takeover of the docks” and wrote to both Prime Minister Harold Wilson and Conservative leader Ted Heath to urge a review of the BBC‘s charter. The play’s subject would become all too real for Heath, who, as the next Prime Minister, presided over a period of bitter industrial conflict.
91m; U.S.
Director: Michael Moore
Synopsis: On his book tour, Michael Moore exposes more wrongdoing by greedy big businesses and callous politicians around America.
95m; U.S.
Director: Doug Pray
Synopsis: An exhilarating look into the soul of the American truck driver.
108m; Italy
Director: Giuseppe De Santis
Synopsis: Francesca and Walter are two-bit criminals in Northern Italy, and, in an effort to avoid the police, Francesca joins a group of women rice workers. She meets the voluptuous peasant rice worker, Silvana, and the soon-to-be-discharged soldier, Marco. Walter follows her to the rice fields, and the four characters become involved in a complex plot involving robbery, love, and murder
38m; South Korea
Director: Jungmin Cho
Synopsis: Fired for trying to organise a union, contract workers at GM Daewoo go to extreme measures, holding a sit-in strike from the perch of a CCTV tower. With undertones of Michael Moore’s Roger and Me, the film exposes the brutal treatment irregular workers face in their struggle
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