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Author Archives: Metro Council

Strike (Strajk – Die Heldin von Danzig) [2006]

07 May

104m; Poland/Germany

Director: Volker Schlöndorff

Cast: Katharina Thalbach, Andrzej Chyra and Dominique Horwitz

Synopsis: Shows the beginnings of Poland’s Solidarity movement through the little-known figure of Anna Walentynowicz. The latest film from the director of The Tin Drum tells the true story of an ordinary woman who helped spark a revolution in Poland. Shipyard welder Agnieszka (Katharina Thalbach), concerned about dangerous working conditions, speaks up to no avail. After an accident kills several employees and their families are denied pension benefits, she steps up her activities, becoming a union leader and powerful adviser to Lech Walesa, laying the foundation for the Solidarity movement.

Contact: http://www.e.bell.ca/filmfest/2006/home/default.asp

 
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Posted by on May 7, 2012 in Netflix Watch Instantly, Organizing, Politics, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts, Women, Working Class

 

Strikebound (1984)

07 May

101m; Australia

Director: Richard Lowenstein

Cast: Chris Haywood, Carol Burns and Hugh Keays-Byrne

Synopsis: The first real coal-miners strike in 1930’s Australia told through the struggles of Agnes and Wattie Doig, two lovable rogue characters. Lowenstein’s approach is simple and effective with a documentary feel about it. A leftist film worth marching for.

 
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Posted by on May 7, 2012 in Drama, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

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Strikebreakers

07 May

2:46m; U.S.

Director: Michael Moore

Synopsis: Comic vignette from Michael Moore’s TV show The Awful Truth.

 
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Posted by on May 7, 2012 in Comedy

 

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Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (“Bar Association”)

07 May

45m; U.S.

Director: LeVar Burton

Cast: Armin Shimerman, Avery Brooks, Colm Meany, Max Grodénchik

Synopsis: Episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine where the employees of Quark’s bar decide to organize a union.

 
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Posted by on May 7, 2012 in Collective Bargaining, SciFi, Service Workers, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

Strong Roots (2001)

07 May

43m; Brazil

Director: Maria Luisa Mendonca and Aline Sasahara

Synopsis: Pedro, Antonio, and Luis joined Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement in search of a piece of land, dignity in their lives, and justice in their society. Through their memories and their day- to-day lives in Pernambuco and Bahia, they bring us a personal portrait one of the most vital social movement in Latin America today. The Landless Workers Movement (MST) started in 1985 to correct the extremely unequal concentration of land in Brazil. There, 1% of large landholders control 46% of agricultural land. Of the 400 million hectares of arable land, only 60 million are used for planting crops; 4.8 million families have no land, while 35 million Brazilians live in poverty. Over the past 15 years, the Landless Workers Movement has won 20 million hectares of land for 300,000 families and built thousands of food production cooperatives and schools. These land occupations bring new life to people without hope. And they pressure the Brazilian government to implement agrarian reform. The MST land redistribution is grounded in Brazilian Constitutional law, which decrees that land must fulfill a “social function.” Today, nearly 100,000 families prepare to occupy land in order to feed themselves. They live under plastic tents, by the roads, waiting for their chance to work and produce. They are the soldiers on the front line in the battle for Brazil’s future. – http://www.meaningfulmovies.org/film_list/films/film_187.htm

 
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Posted by on May 7, 2012 in Communism/Socialism, Documentary, Farm & Food, Organizing

 

Struggle (2003)

07 May

74m; Austria

Synopsis: Polish worker travels to Austria for work, picking strawberries, gutting turkeys, working as a cleaner. Essentially about division — between rich and poor, East and West, between individuals — and the perpetual strains these differences produce.

 
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Posted by on May 7, 2012 in Documentary, Farm & Food, Migrant workers

 

Struggle in Italy (Lotte in Italia) [1971]

07 May

62m; Italy

Director: Groupe Dziga Vertov

Cast: Cristiana Tullio-Altan, Paolo Pozzesi and Jerome Hinstin

Synopsis (IMDB): The film reveals how and why a supposedly revolutionary Italian girl has in fact fallen prey to bourgeois ideology.

 
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Posted by on May 7, 2012 in Communism/Socialism, Drama

 

Struggle in Smugtown

07 May

Director: Jon Garlock

Synopsis: Labor history in Rochester, NY.

 
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Posted by on May 7, 2012 in Labor History

 

Struggles in Steel: The Fight for Equal Opportunity (1996)

07 May

58m; U.S.

Director: Tony Buba, Raymond Henderson

Cast: Raymond Henderson, Dennis C. Dickerson and Katrina Heiss

Synopsis (IMDB): This documentary tells the forgotten story of the African-American struggle for equality in the U.S. steel industry (based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania). In a series of interviews intermixed with archival footage and stills, we learn how these workers faced and overcame discrimination that came from white workers, the big steel companies, and even from their own unions.

Contact: www.braddockfilms.com 412-681-5449

 
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Posted by on May 7, 2012 in Blacks, Documentary, Organizing

 

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Strumpet City (1980)

07 May

360m; Ireland

Cast: Frank Grimes, David Kelly, Angela Harding, Peter O’Toole

Synopsis (IMDB): Covering the years between 1907 and 1914, Strumpet City follows several characters through the nightmare years of the “Dublin Lockout,” when the Catholic Church sided with the industrialists to smash Irish labor’s first substantive steps towards unionizing. Using the real-life labor organizer Jim Larkin (Peter O’Toole) as the dramatic lynchpin for the various stories, Strumpet City juggles several storylines to give an overall view of the terrible poverty and misery that afflicted the working poor of Dublin. The central story revolves around Mary (Angela Harding), a young domestic who comes to work for the wealthy, oblivious Bradshaws (Edward Byrne and Daphne Carroll). Once Mary meets handsome, kind foundry worker “Fitz” Fitzpatrick (Bryan Murray), she immediately falls in love, and the couple make plans to save enough money to eventually marry. Mary, distressed at the way the Bradshaws shuttle off their devoted housekeeper Miss Gilchrist (Mairin D. O’Sullivan) to the poor house when she can no longer work, decides to leave the insensitive Bradshaw household and marry Fitz.

–http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/26709/strumpet-city/

 
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Posted by on May 7, 2012 in Class, Collective Bargaining, Drama, Organizing, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

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