52m; Ireland
Director: Stephen Rooke & Ruan Magan
Synopsis: The story of indentured Irish workers from Duffy, Ireland, who were brought to the United States in April 1832 to build one of the earliest stretches of railroad in Pennsylvania.
Contact: http://www.tilefilms.ie/ info@tilefilms.ie Rachel Towell, Producer: rachel@tilefilms.ie
84m; Uruguay
Director: Adrián Biniez
Cast: Horacio Camandule, Leonor Svarcas and Ignacio Alcuri
Synopsis: A chronicle of a supermarket security guard’s obsession with a late-shift janitor.
98m; Brazil
Director: Anselmo Duarte
Synopsis: Brazilian farmer in Northern Brazil carries a huge cross to the church to save his sick donkey. The priest refuses him entry and the working class in the town rally to his support.
11m;
Director: Clarissa De Los Reyes
Synopsis: When a phone call brings news of her father’s death in the Philippines, a Filipino caregiver working illegally in New York City must make a choice between her duties as the family breadwinner and her desire to go home to grieve her father’s death. “Giving Care” is a story about one of the worst fears of an immigrant far away from home: not being there when a loved one goes.
82m; France
Director: Agnès Varda
Cast: François Wertheimer, Agnès Varda and Bodan Litnanski
Synopsis (IMDB): An intimate, picaresque inquiry into French life as lived by the country’s poor and its provident, as well as by the film’s own director, Agnes Varda. The aesthetic, political and moral point of departure for Varda are gleaners, those individuals who pick at already-reaped fields for the odd potato, the leftover turnip.
100m; U.S.
Director: James Foley
Cast: Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon and Alec Baldwin
Synopsis (IMDB): An examination of the machinations behind the scenes at a real estate office.
58m; U.S.
Director: Lorraine Gray
Synopsis: Traveling from Tennessee to Mexico’s northern border, from Silicon Valley to the Philippines, The Global Assembly Line takes viewers inside our new global economy. A vivid portrayal of the lives of working women and men in the “free trade zones” of developing countries and North America, as U.S. industries close their factories to search the globe for lower-wage workforces. We take a rare look at the people who are making the clothing we wear and the electronics goods we use–as well as the business decisions behind manufacturing–on the global assembly line.
89m; U.S.
Director: David Novack
Synopsis: This new film from American Coal Productions soberly illustrates the suffering of the residents of West Virginia who struggle to preserve their mountains, their culture, and their lives in the face of the omnipotent King Coal and examines the explosive conflict between the coal industry and residents of West Virginia.
Contact: burningthefuture@yahoo.com For Worldwide Sales for broadcast, theatrical, DVD and digital rights, please contact: Doug Zwick Specialty Studios Entertainment doug@specialtystudios.com Tel/Fax: +1.818.990.8461
11m
Director: Dominique Basi
Synopsis (CLiFF): Follows Karnel Basi, a public transit bus driver in South Vancouver, along his regular route through the downtown east side to the heart of the city and back again. Along the way he picks up a variety of passengers, struggles to stay on schedule and keep his bus safe. A good student film.
86m; U.S.
Director: Haskell Wexler
Synopsis: In this extraordinary video, Academy Award-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler records the several-year-long struggle of the Los Angeles Bus Riders Union (BRU) to win better service and to challenge the race and class bias in city spending priorities. At 86 minutes, it’s long for classroom use and drags in a few places for many high school students; but what a rich documentary this is. At the outset, Kikanza Ramsey, a young BRU organizer, explains that the union is “a political, social experiment to see if we can build a multiracial, bilingual, gender-balanced mass movement of working class people that is willing to fight for a set of demands that challenges corporate capital.” And this is not mere rhetoric. The remainder of the film brings her words to life, revealing the twists and turns, highs and lows of this struggle as seen through the eyes of participants.
THE LABOR FILM DATABASE 