RSS

Author Archives: Metro Council

Marked Woman (1937)

96m; U.S.

Director: Lloyd Bacon

Cast: Bette Davis, Humphrey Bogart and Lola Lane

Synopsis: Mary Dwight works as a hostess at the Club Intime run by ruthless gangster Johnny Vanning. When one of her “clients” is murdered prosecutor David Graham questions Mary but she won’t cooperate and Vanning is acquitted. When Mary’s sister Betty is killed by one of Vanning’s thugs she decides to spill the beans and is beaten into disfigurement. At her bedside all the hostesses agree to testify.

 

The Marrying Kind (1952)

92m; U.S.

Director: George Cukor

Cast: Judy Holliday, Aldo Ray and Madge Kennedy

Synopsis: Romanticized version of working class sexual politics as a couple each tell a divorce judge their story.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Romance, Women, Working Class

 

Marty (1955)

91m; U.S.

Director: Delbert Mann

Synopsis (IMDB): A touching story about two lonely people who have almost resigned themselves to never being truly loved.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Romance, Working Class

 

The Masses and the Millionaires: the Homestead Strike (1974)

30m; U.S.

Director: Robert Saudek Associates

Synopsis: Homestead steel strike in PA.

 

The Match Factory Girl (1990)

68m; Finland

Director: Aki Kaurismäki

Cast: Kati Outinen, Elina Salo and Esko Nikkari

Synopsis (IMDB): Iris has a dead-end job in a match-factory, lives with her dour and forbidding parents, and her social life is a disaster. But when she is made pregnant after a one-night stand by a man who thought she was a prostitute, she decides that enough is enough and plans her revenge.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Drama, Women, Working Class

 

Gamblers (Les Mauvais joueurs) [2005]

85m; France

Director: Frédéric Balekdjian

Cast: Pascal Elbé, Simon Abkarian and Isaac Sharry

Synopsis (IMDB): Vahé, Sahak, and Toros run a bonneteau game on the streets of Paris. They’re Lebanese French of Armenian descent. Vahé also works with his father, a cloth merchant, and is in love with Lu Ann, Chinese French, who’s broken off their affair. Vahé wants to make things right: with Lu Ann, with his father’s business, and with Yuen, Lu Ann’s younger brother, who’s on the edge of delinquency and owes money to the gang who arranged his passage from China. Vahé tries to be like a father to Yuen, teaching him a work ethic. When Yuen impetuosity puts his own life in jeopardy, Vahé tries to save him. Will Vahé’s impulses and hopes die on the streets of Paris?

 

Mechanical Love (2007)

Director: Phie Ambo

Synopsis (IMDB): “Mechanical Love” is a documentary on the interrelationship between robots and humans. The film portrays people who have a close relationship with a robot, and it takes us from the high temple of robot technology, Tokyo, Japan, to Braunschweig, Germany, to Italy and back to Copenhagen, Denmark. By this world tour director Phie Ambo seeks to highlight the human need for love and our craving to be loved by others – perhaps the two most important aspects of life. Through the main characters, she examines the cultural differences in how we accept emotional robots in the East and the West.

Contact: http://icarusfilms.com/new2009/ml.html lori@icarusfilms.com Sending screener

 

Meeting Face To Face: The Iraq-US Labor Solidarity Tour (2006)

16m; U.S.

Director: Jeremy Levin

Synopsis: Follows 2005 Iraq-US Labor Solidarity Tour

Contact: http://www.meetingfacetoface.org

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Documentary, Organizing, War

 

Memoir of a Plunder

Fernando Solas

Synopsis: Neoliberal globalization

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Documentary, Global Economy

 

The Men Who Would Conquer China (2004)

58m; US
Directors: Nick Torrens and Jane St. Vincent Welch

For 4,000 years China largely succeeded, both culturally and economically, in keeping the rest of the world at bay. Following its introduction of reforms in the 1980’s, however, including a transition from a socialist to a market economy, China allowed multinational corporations to set up shop. Now that the world’s most populous nation is clearly on a fast track to capitalism, American investors are eagerly exploring ways to exploit China’s new ‘economic miracle.’

Icarus Films