15m; U.S.
Director: Humphrey Jennings
Synopsis (IMDB); A look at how industry workers spend their time when they are not at work.
Author Archives: Metro Council
Spartacus (1960)
184m; U.S.
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier and Jean Simmons
Synopsis: This sweeping epic, set in the 1st Century B.C., stars Kirk Douglas. An enslaved army deserter and gladiator, he escapes and recruits 120,000 followers who defeat several Roman legions before finally losing. Stellar cast includes Laurence Olivier, Tony Curtis, Jean Simmons, Charles Laughton and Peter Ustinov. Screenplay by blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, from also black-listed Howard Fast’s novel. ‘Who is Spartacus?’ ‘I am Spartacus!’ (Rochester Labor Film Series)
Special Pass (2009)
24m; Singapore
Director: Vicknesh Varan
Synopsis: A documentary about a group of foreign workers in Singapore who attempt to seek shelter and support themselves while out of work. This is the lesser-known story of foreigners who receive little support in a country that, ironically, was built by the work of immigrants.
Stand Up for Journalism
3:30m;
Synopsis: Widespread cuts in jobs and budgets are seriously damaging the media industry, increasing the strain on journalists, publishing and media workers and compromising the quality and standards of the news and information. Casualisation, increasing concentration of media ownership and profiteering are affecting the ability of journalists and publishing workers to maintain professional standards, with damaging consequences for our democracy. The film is part of a campaign of the International Federation of Journalists, calling on media owners to stop cutting jobs, pay, and resources and start investing more in quality media.
Contact: IFJ 2009 Geneva Labour Film Shorts Festival
Standing on My Sisters’ Shoulders (2002)
61m; U.S.
Director: Laura J. Lipson
Synopsis (official website): The award-winning documentary “Standing On My Sisters’ Shoulders” takes on the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi in the 1950’s and 60’s from the point of view of the courageous women who lived it – and emerged as its grassroots leaders. These women stood up and fought for the right to vote and the right to an equal education. They not only brought about change in Mississippi, but they altered the course of American history.
This documentary presents original interviews with many of the Civil Rights movement’s most remarkable women: Unita Blackwell, a sharecropper turned activist, who became Mississippi’s first female black mayor; Mae Bertha Carter, a mother of 13, whose children became the first to integrate the Drew County schools against dangerous opposition; white student activist Joan Trumpauer Mulholland who not only participated in sit-ins but took a stand on integration by attending an all black university; Annie Devine and Victoria Gray Adams, who, along with Fannie Lou Hamer, stepped up and challenged the Democratic Party and President Johnson at the 1964 Convention.
Contact: http://www.sisters-shoulders.org/film.html
Stanley and Iris (1989)
104m; U.S.
Director: Martin Ritt
Cast: Jane Fonda, Robert De Niro and Swoosie Kurtz
Synopsis (IMDB): An illiterate cook at a company cafeteria tries for the attention of a newly widowed woman. As they get to know one another, she discovers his inability to read. When he is fired, she takes on trying to teach him to read in her kitchen each night.
Starkiss: Circus Girls in India (2003)
77m; Netherlands/India
Director: Jascha de Wilde, Chris Relleke
Synopsis (IMDB): This documentary provides an interesting look at the life of young girls (as young as 7)who are basically sold to the circus as performers. Some parent’s, having received advances on their daughter’s contracts, abandon them for years. Others, pay occasional visits to their daughters, often coming for another advance. The girls are basically jailed, unable to communicate with anyone other than their trainers and guard. A well done documentary providing some really poignant shots and candid interviews.
The Stars Look Down (1940)
110m; U.K.
Director: Carol Reed
Cast: Michael Redgrave, Margaret Lockwood and Edward Rigby
Synopsis (IMDB): Davey Fenwick leaves his mining village on a university scholarship intent on returning to better support the miners against the owners. But he falls in love with Jenny who gets him to marry her and return home as local schoolteacher before finishing his degree. Davey finds he is ill-at-ease in his role, the more so when he realises Jenny still loves her former boyfriend. When he finds that his father and the other miners are going to have to continue working on a possibly deadly coal seam he decides to act.
Startup.com (2001)
107m; U.S.
Director: Chris Hegedus, Jehane Noujaim
Cast: Kaleil Isaza Tuzman, Tom Herman and Kenneth Austin
Synopsis (IMDB): Kaleil Isaza Tuzman and Tom Herman have had a dream since they became friends at age fifteen: get rich by developing their own dot com company, in some aspect of computer technology interface. Now in their late twenties, they have now come up with the idea they believe will make their riches, namely as Tom refers to it, “parking tickets”: the company will be the on-line revenue collection interface for municipal governments. GovWorks.com came into existence in May 1999 with only an idea. The process of building the business focuses on obtaining venture capital based solely on the idea, with the actual mechanics of the website seemingly almost an afterthought, or at least one left primarily to the hired help. Regardless of the strength of the idea itself in raising this capital, another initial problem they face is what they see as non-commitment by a third partner, Kaleil’s friend Chieh Cheung.
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