93m; Australia
Director: Roy Ward Baker
Cast: John Mills, Sylvia Syms and Brenda De Banzie
Synopsis (IMDB): A union leader in a large company tries to win equal rights for the handful of West Indian workers at the company, but finds it is an uphill battle. After being successful, and rightly proud of his efforts, he finds that he and his wife have a difficult time coming to terms with the fact that his only daughter intends to marry a West Indian.
119m; U.S.
Director: Marc Abraham
Cast: Greg Kinnear, Lauren Graham and Alan Alda
Synopsis: Corporations have time, money, and power on their side. All Bob Kearns had was the truth. Robert Kearns takes on the Detroit automakers who he claims stole his idea for the intermittent windshield wiper.
U.K.
Director: Ken Loach
Synopsis: Liverpool dockworkers’ strike.
60m; U.S.
Director: Jill Nicholls
Synopsis: Part 2 of the documentary series tracing the history of American folk music. In this installment: The 1930s saw folk redefined as the voice of protest under the aegis of Woody Guthrie.
20m; Argentina
Director: Grupo Alavio & MarieTrigona
Synopsis: Documents the efforts by Buenos Aires transit workers to re-introduce the 6 hour day after the military dictatorship had destroyed the labor conditions.
60m; U.K.
Director: John Baxter
Synopsis (IMDB): Young Peter wants so badly to be an engineer that he starts to work on an invention. To raise money, he and his friend Tim wash windows. However, Tim needs the money they earn to go to Ireland to visit his grandfather who is very ill, so Peter gives him all the money they have made. Everything works out well for Peter in the end when he is praised as a young genius
114m; U.S.
Director: King Vidor
Cast: Gary Cooper, Patricia Neal, Raymond Massey
Synopsis (IMDB): An uncompromising, visionary architect struggles to maintain his integrity and individualism despite personal, professional and economic pressures to conform to popular standards. Based on the Ayn Rand novel.
16m; U.S.
Synopsis: Describes the circumstances which caused over 400 workers at the O’Sullivan Rubber Company in Winchester, VA, to strike on 5/13/56 to preserve their union.
Synopsis (BFI): The BFI has compiled for the first time, the definitive collection of films from the 1950s’ Free Cinema movement. Free Cinema not only re-invented British documentary making, but this highly influential period in the country’s cinema history was the precursor for the better known British New Wave of social-realist films in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
The films were ‘free’ in the sense that they were made outside the framework of the film industry, and that their statements were entirely personal . They had in common not only the conditions of their production (shoestring budget, unpaid crew) and the equipment they employed (usually hand-held 16mm Bolex cameras), but also a style and attitude and an experimental approach to sound. Mostly funded by the BFI’s Experimental Film Fund, they featured ordinary, mostly working-class people at work and play, displaying a rare sympathy and respect, and a self-consciously poetic style.
Website: http://filmstore.bfi.org.uk/acatalog/info_150.html
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