8m
Producer: Detroit Workers’ Newsreel Special
Synopsis (BAM/PFA): The only newsreel coverage of the historic mass march in downtown Detroit on February 4, 1932, against the starvation program of Hoover/Murphy, and the armed, unprovoked attack by Dearborn police and Ford “guards” on unemployed auto workers at the gates of the River Rouge plant.
90m
Directors: Judith Ehrlich, Rick Goldsmith
Synopsis (Moyers): The story of Daniel Ellsberg, the Vietnam War strategist-turned whistleblower who leaked the documents that came to be known as the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times.
Website: http://www.mostdangerousman.org/
17m
Director: Lee Dick
Synopsis (BAM/PFA): An exposé, based on the findings of the Tri-State Survey Committee, of the appalling health conditions and survival problems of the workers in the zinc and lead mining areas at the junction of Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. It shows the fight led by the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union to improve the efforts of mine owners to eliminate silicosis, tuberculosis and lead poisoning.
available on YouTube
77m
Directors: David Redmon, Ashley Sabin
Synopsis (TIFF): Girl Model shows a rarely seen side of the fashion industry. The film brings a novelist’s eye for emotional and psychological complexity to its portrait of two women. Ashley, an American former model, travels to remote Siberian villages to scout young teenaged girls for fashion shoots in Japan. We see her discover Nadya, a thirteen-year old blonde, who radiates the innocence coveted by Ashley’s clients. Like thousands of other Russian girls, Nadya sees modeling as the best chance to support her family. She feels lucky when Ashley’s agency offers a contract with guarantees. But as the film follows Nadya to Japan and Ashley on her further scouting trips, we see each one grapple with the kind of harsh realities that fashion magazines tend to ignore.
Filmmakers David Redmon and Ashley Sabin (a different Ashley from the one onscreen) demonstrate an intrepid ability to track an unregulated system, and go far beyond mere fact collecting. Their attention to poetic detail — in faces, interactions and environments — elevates the film to a work of art.
Website: http://www.girlmodelthemovie.com
25m
Director: Toshio Matsumoto
Synopsis (VEEHD): A documentary about traditional weavers of Nishijin. — “Documentaries up until then were mostly made with the backing of a labor union or Communist Party organization. If you thought of doing something different from that you had to create a completely different support structure because there was no foundation for making such films or showing them. You were forced to start from there. Right at that time just after the setback over the 1960 US-Japan Security Treaty I filmed the documentary Nishijin with the backing of a film viewer society called the “Kyoto Society for Viewing Documentary Cinema.” Of course in terms of awareness they were left-wing but still not what you call a political organization. I think they were the first to try to cultivate new spectators and make the kind of films they wanted to see on their own. As an initial plan I proposed something like what Ive just been talking about and got their approval to address Kyotos Nishijin with the aim of giving form to something more deeply submerged within the situation something warped and hard to express. I wasn’t trying to depict the place called Nishijin or show people weaving but to give shape to the thick silent unvoiced voices lurking beneath Nishijin. I eliminated so-called “unusual” subjects or decisive moments and opted for the form of a cine poem that persistently piled up exacting images. Opinion was divided over the results but the fact it won the Silver Lion at the Venice International Documentary Film Festival helped clear the way for my next steps.” Toshio Matsumoto
Website: http://www.ubu.com/film/matsumoto.html
Director: Tom Putnam
Synopsis: BURN is a character-driven documentary about Detroit, told through the eyes of Detroiters who are on the front lines, trying to rescue and rebuild it. BURN follows the firefighters, the men and women charged with the thankless task of saving a city that many have written off as dead. We also look at the educators, the reformers, the activists, the enthusiasts — those who have the vision and the heart to bring a forgotten American dream back to Detroit.
Website: http://detroitfirefilm.org
Tom Putnam: tom@tomputnam.net
52m
Director: Natalia Almada
Synopsis (POV): From dusk to dawn, El Velador (The Night Watchman) accompanies Martin, a guard who watches over the extravagant mausoleums of some of Mexico’s most notorious drug lords. In the labyrinth of the cemetery, this film about violence without violence reminds us that, amid the turmoil of a drug war that has claimed more than 50,000 lives, ordinary existence persists in Mexico and quietly defies the dead.
Website: http://www.altamurafilms.com/el_velador.html
45m
Directors: Tami Gold, Dan Gordon, Erik Lewis
Synopsis (AndersonGold Films): On July 21, 1978 thousands of postal workers across the country walked off their jobs when their contract expired, saying “No” to mandatory overtime, forced speedups and hazardous working conditions. As a result of this wildcat strike, six hundred thousand postal workers won a better contract. But two hundred workers were arbitrarily fired by management to teach all postal workers a lesson.
SIGNED, SEALED and DELIVERED… is the story of the struggle these postal workers waged to win back their jobs. It follows their fight into the streets, onto the floor of the American Postal Workers Union’s National Convention and among workers and communities nationwide. But it took the tragic death of Michael McDermott, a 25 year old mailhandler who was sucked into a conveyor belt and crushed to death, to bring their hazardous working conditions to national attention.
Website: http://www.andersongoldfilms.com/films/documentaries/ssd.htm
59m
Director: John Caldwell
Synopsis (Berkeley Media): This thought-provoking, widely acclaimed visual essay provides a troubling journey through migrant farmworker camps in suburban southern California — Rancho de los Diablos, Kelly Camp, Porterville, McGonigle Canyon — where homeless indigenous Mixteco workers coexist near gated designer-home enclaves in Carlsbad, La Costa, Encinitas, and Del Mar.
In a remarkable feat of artistic and political fusion, the film explores the charged debate over the meaning and consequences of immigrant culture near America’s southern border, and along the way examines the complex realities of race and class in this country.
21m
Director: Blaine Dunlap
Synopsis (Southeast Media Preservation Lab): Portrait of Stanley Maupin, sidewalk flusher on the late-night streets of Dallas, Texas. Filmed in the winter of 1972-1973.
Website: http://analoglab.drupalgardens.com/content/sometimes-i-run
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