Director: Cheryl Hess/Melissa Thompson
Synopsis: Restaurant/service workers.
Contact: mthom@astro.ocis.temple.edu
Author Archives: Metro Council
In This World (2002)
88m; U.K
Director: Michael Winterbottom
Cast: Jamal Udin Torabi, Enayatullah and Imran Paracha
Synopsis: In February 2002 in the Shamshatoo Refugee Camp in the North West Frontier Province in Pakistan, there are 53,000 refugees living in sub-human conditions since 1979 with the Soviet Union invasion and 2001 with the USA bombing and invasion of Afghanistan. The family of the Afghan Enayat and his cousin Jamal decides to send them illegally to London to have a better life. They hire coyotes to smuggle the cousins through Iran and Turkey to Italy and finally London hidden inside trucks and containers. However, the long journey locked in a container with other families separates the cousins and on 09 August 2002, Jamal has his asylum application refused in London.
In White Collar America (1974)
52m; U.S.
Synopsis: A picture of the mind-numbing clerical work at Georgia Life, an Atlanta insurance company.
In the Beginning / A l’origine (2009)
155m; France
Director: Xavier Giannoli
Synopsis: France, present day. A professional conman passes himself off as the boss of a construction site building a highway extension. He cons the whole region, hires dozens of workers and cynically enjoys the profits of his scam until he meets the lady mayor of a small village that the road will go through. She intrigues and unsettles him, before revealing to him a world he never knew: feelings. How far will he go now to save his victims and save himself from his own lies?
In the Company of Men (1969)
52m; U.S.
Director: Newsweek
Synopsis: An examination of the conflicting attitudes between minority group workers and company foremen.
In the Company’s Hands (1987)
58m; U.S.
Director: Jack Kelly
Cast: Michael Martin
Synopsis: Jack Kelly directed, wrote and produced this comprehensive documentary about the Southern WV coal mine wars. It is narrated by Kelly and local actor Michael Martin who also acts in some of the recreations. Using archival footage, photographs, and historic songs, Kelly recreates the world of coal mining in the area. He interviews the descendants of people on both sides – the children of coal mine owners and the children of coal miners. Some of the people interviewed include black coal miner Sug Hawkins, Cecil Roberts (not UMWA president), and William Becker. The nephew of Tom Felts of the Baldwin-Felts Agency and a son of an owner are also interviewed. The film goes back to the first days of coal mining in WV, which started in 1871 in the New River area near Beckley. By 1896, 26 million tons of coal from the Pocahontas Field was being shipped all over the country to power the developing industrial age. 14 millionaires lived in Brawell. Around 1900 many miners from Europe were brought to the coal fields, segregated in their own sections of the company towns. 80 % of all coal in WV was mined in company towns. The coal mine owners felt they had a divine right to do whatever was necessary to build their companies in “the wilderness.” Most of the film focuses on the struggle between miners and the oppressive reality of life in company towns where all behavior was closely controlled by the miner owners. Key events such as The Matewan Massacre and The Battle of Blair Mountain are analyzed. Dr. Fred Barkey, a well-known WV labor historian, and industry historian Dr. C. Stuart McGehee provided the historical information. Executive producer Donn Rogosin, station manager of WSWP-TV.
Inch’Allah Dimanche (Thank God its Sunday) (2001)
98m; France
Director: Yamina Benguigi
Synopsis (New York Times): The abused and oppressed wife of an Algerian immigrant begins standing up for herself in a film by Yamina Benguigui.
http://movies.nytimes.com/movie/259507/Inch-Allah-Dimanche/overview
Indentured (2010)
10m; U.S./Iraq
Director: Cy Kuckenbaker
Synopsis: “Indentured” investigates the living conditions of South Asian laborers working on US military bases in Iraq. Thousands of nameless workers, called “Third Country Nationals” because they’re neither American nor Iraqi, toil inside US bases in Iraq as food servers, custodians, construction workers and more. But unlike American contractors who often make six figure salaries in Iraq, these men typically make less than two dollars an hour. Nepalese custodians talk about the illegal broker’s fees they had to pay to get their jobs on the base. Inside a company-run camp a Nepalese supervisor explains how they are brought into Iraq against Nepalese and Iraqi law.
Industrial Britain (1931)
22 min
Director: Robert Flaherty
Synopsis (British Film Institute):
Industrial Britain represents a watershed in the development of the British documentary movement, the moment when artistic achievement was first blended meaningfully with social intent.
The film developed from John Grierson’s opportunistic recruitment of Robert Flaherty. Flaherty was an anthropologist-cum-filmmaker who shot to worldwide prominence with Nanook of the North (1920), a documentary that detailed the hardships of Eskimo life.
Anxious to secure a prestige director for the project (Anthony Asquith had already turned them down) The Empire Marketing Board turned hopefully to a near-destitute Flaherty. Soured by failure in Hollywood and inspired by the high-seriousness of early Soviet cinema, Flaherty exchanged the exoticism of his previous work for an appreciation of Britain’s industrial workers. Many of his sequences – like the English potter – were considered successful enough to merit a subsequent release as shorts.
http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/513737/index.html
The Industrial City (1970)
16m; U.S.
Director: Encyclopedia Brittanica Educational Corporation
Synopsis: Study of Detroit as an automotive industrial city.
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