91m; U.K.
Director: Peter Cattaneo
Cast: Robert Carlyle, Tom Wilkinson and Mark Addy
Synopsis: Six unemployed steel workers form a male striptease act. The women cheer them on to go for “the full monty” – total nudity.
Trailer
Author Archives: Metro Council
The Great Pretenders (2007)
30m; U.S.
Director: Jeremy Cohen
Cast: Raniah Al-Sayed, Keith Brown and Al Bundonis
Synopsis (IMDB): A biting satire from the front lines of the American workplace, where layoffs are so routine they’ve created their own industry – outplacement. Elite Transition Services promises laid-off worker Scott Matter help finding a job and getting back on his feet. But as the job search grows increasingly desperate, Scott finds himself caught in a corporate purgatory where the absurdities of office life are brought into vivid relief.
Trailer
The Gronholm Method (El Método) [2005]
115m; Spain, Argentina, Italy
Director: Marcelo Piñeyro
Cast: Eduardo Noriega, Najwa Nimri and Eduard Fernández
Synopsis: Brilliant. A modern version of Rod Serling’s classic TV morality play “The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street” crossed with “Survivor,” white collar job applicants are put in a room and choose up sides and press their individual advantages.
Trailer
Human Resources (1999)
100m; France
Director: Laurent Cantet
Cast: Jalil Lespert, Jean-Claude Vallod and Chantal Barré
Synopsis: The 35-hour work week has all of France in its thrall. This film turns it into a feature about economic and familial politics. Frank, a business school graduate, returns to his provincial hometown to take a management position in the factory where his father has been working for 30 years. First Frank makes the mistake of actually asking the workers on the assembly line for their opinions. Then upper management manipulates his findings to lay off employees. This creates a huge rift, not only between labor and management, but between father and son. A human morality tale that evokes paternal and filial love, and illustrates the personal risk behind political ideas.
Full Film (in multiple parts)
Hula Girls (2006)
110m; Japan
Director: Lee Sang-il
Cast: Yasuko Matsuyuki, Etsushi Toyokawa and Yû Aoi
Synopsis: Billy Elliot meets “Shall We Dance?” Japanese coal-mining town tries to deal with loss of jobs.
Contact: http://www.fortissimofilms.com/catalogue/title.asp?filmID=311
Trailer
H-2 Worker (1990)
70m; U.S.
Director: Stephanie Black
Synopsis: Stephanie Black has a record of making films about the real costs of economic development including Life and Debt about the economic destruction in Jamaica because of IMF policies. In H-2 worker, we learn about the real labor conditions of agricultural workers who are brought to the US and then used virtually as slave labor in the H-2 program. These workers who are brought in to Florida’s Lake Okeechobee area from Jamaica and the Caribbean are the “slave” workers of America providing great profits for the agricultural owners and misery for the workers and their families. It also is connected with the efforts in California by some leading politicians to bring back the “guest workers” program.
Contact: http://www.lifeanddebt.org/h2worker/
Trailer
It’s a Free World (2007)
96m; U.K.
Director: Ken Loach
Cast: Kierston Wareing, Juliet Ellis and Leslaw Zurek
Synopsis (IMDB): Angie gets the sack from a recruitment agency for bad behaviour in public. Seizing the chance, she teams up with her flatmate, Rose, to run a similar business from their kitchen. With immigrants desperate to work the opportunities are considerable, particularly for two girls so in tune with these times
Contact: Please feel free to show whichever of Ken’s films you feel your audience would most appreciate. You should be able to get a copy of most of them but a couple of them are dogged by convoluted rights issues with the BBC. However, the BFI and the British Council are a great source and will help you get most of the films. The best person to contact in the first instance is: Geraldine.higgins@britishcouncil.org (from “Ann Cattrall”)
Trailer
Live Nude Girls Unite! (2000)
75m; U.S.
Director: Vicky Funari, Julia Query
Cast: Stephanie Batey, Darrell Davis and Julia Query
Synopsis (IMDB): Documentary look at the 1996-97 effort of the dancers and support staff at a San Francisco peep show, The Lusty Lady, to unionize. Angered by arbitrary and race-based wage policies, customers’ surreptitious video cameras, and no paid sick days or holidays, the dancers get help from the Service Employees International local and enter protracted bargaining with the union-busting law firm that management hires. We see the women work, sort out their demands, and go through the difficulties of bargaining. The narrator is Julia Query, a dancer and stand-up comedian who is reluctant to tell her mother, a physician who works with prostitutes, that she strips.
Watch Online
http://www.hulu.com/watch/362936
Life and Debt (2001)
80m; U.K./Jamaica
Director: Stephanie Black
Cast: Michael Manley, Stanley Fischer
Synopsis: Documentary looks at the effects of neo-liberal globalization on Jamaica, including policies of the World Trade Organization and free trade zones. Features wonderful interviews with the late democratic socialist Prime Minister of Jamaica Michael Manley and narration by novelist Jamaica Kincaid.
Trailer
Man Push Cart (2005)
87m; U.S.
Contact: Ramin Bahrani
Cast: Ahmad Razvi, Leticia Dolera and Charles Daniel Sandoval
Synopsis (IMDB): A night in the life of a former Pakistani rock star who now sells coffee from his push cart on the streets of Manhattan.
Trailer
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