147m; USA
Director: Hal Ashby
Cast: David Carradine, Ronny Cox and Melinda Dillon
Synopsis: Film biography of American folksinger Woody Guthrie.
Trailer
Full Film
Category Archives: Available Online
Brassed Off (1996)
101m; U.K.
Director: Mark Herman
Cast: Pete Postlethwaite, Tara Fitzgerald, Ewan McGregor, Jim Carter, Sue Johnston, Stephen Moore, Ken Colley, Grimethorpe Colliery Band
Synopsis (IMDB): Laid-off miners in 90’s England. “A small Yorkshire mining town is threatened with being shut down and the only hope for the town’s men is to enter their Grimley Colliery Brass Band into a national competition. They believe they have no hope until Gloria (Tara Fitzgerald) appears carrying her Flugelhorn. At first mocked for being a woman, she soon becomes the only chance for the band to win. In joining the band she puts her relationship with her childhood sweetheart Andy (Ewan McGregor) on the line.”
Trailer
Key Scene
Black Girl (La Noire de…) (1965)
60M; Senegal
Director: Ousmane Sembene
Cast: Mbissine Thérèse Diop, Anne-Marie Jelinek and Robert Fontaine
Synopsis (IMDB): A Senegalese woman is eager to find a better life abroad. She takes a job as a governess for a French family, but finds her duties reduced to those of a maid after the family moves from Dakar to the south of France. In her new country, the woman is constantly made aware of her race and mistreated by her employers. Her hope for better times turns to disillusionment and she falls into isolation and despair. The harsh treatment leads her to consider suicide the only way out.
Full Film
Billy Elliot (2000)
110m; UK
Director: Stephen Daldry
Cast: Jamie Bell, Julie Walters and Jean Heywood
Synopsis (IMDB): County Durham, during the endless, violent 1984 strike against the Thatcher closure of British coal mines. Widower Jackie Elliot and his firstborn, fellow miner Tony, take a dim view of 11 year-old second son Billy’s poor record in boxing class, which worsens when they discover he sneakily transferred to the neighboring, otherwise girls-only-attended ballet class. Only one schoolmate, closet-gay Michael Caffrey, encourages Billy’s desire, aroused by the teacher, who judged him talented enough for private lesson, to train and try out for the world-renowned Royal Ballet audition. Only the prospect of a fancy career unimagined in the pauper quarter may twist pa and big brother’s opposition to indispensable support.
Trailer
Abandoned, Not Forgotten: The Plight of Burma’s Migrant Fishers (2008)
11m; Burma and Thailand
Synopsis: A special report of the International Transport Workers’ Federation about Burma’s migrant fishers. Undocumented Burmese fishermen suffer brutal treatment at the hands of their Thai bosses. Seafarer unions are working to expose these crimes and help Burmese workers in the fishing industry win basic rights and worker protections.
See it here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deCo_ZBSk-U
Adventureland (2009)
107m; U.S.
Director: Greg Mottola
Cast: Jesse Eisenberg, Kristen Stewart, Ryan Reynolds
Synopsis: A comedy set in the summer of 1987 and centered around a recent college grad (Eisenberg) who takes a nowhere job at his local amusement park, only to find it’s the perfect course to get him prepared for the real world.
Can’t Take No More (1979)
29:03; U.S.
Director: Mark Catlin
Cast: Studs Terkel
Synopsis: “Studs Terkel narrates this fast-paced history of occupational health and safety in the U.S. from the Industrial Revolution to the 1970s, which OSHA produced in 1979. Rare archival footage and photos illustrate the problems behind dramatic tragedies as well as the daily dangers that put workers at risk for long-term health problems. It also connects the health and safety movement with the civil rights and environmental movements. This is one of three wonderful films produced and distributed by OSHA during the administration of Dr. Eula Bingham – Can’t Take No More; Worker to Worker; and OSHA. Then in 1981, the new head of OSHA, under the Reagan Administration, Thorne Auchter recalled most copies and they disappeared. A few copies were kept alive by union officials who refused to return their copies. The penalty for being discovered in possession of one of these films was losing all OSHA funding for their safety and health programs.”
Blue Elephants (2010)
14m; Germany
Director: Moritz Siebert
Synopsis: This short documentary shows the dire labour conditions of migrant workers in the Malaysian electronics industry. Men and women from Nepal, Indonesia and other countries come as contract workers to work for Dell, HP, Intell and other well known brand companies. Migrant workers pay several thousands of dollars in commission to labour agents to get work permits. Workers often engage in heavy debts to obtain such permits which may grant them a stay in Malaysia for five year maximum. Time to pay off these debts is limited, while pay is low. Migrant workers face discrimination in Malaysian society as well as on the work floor, and have to accept bad housing conditions. The work load is heavy, and when worker fail to meet set targets, they risk immediate dismissal. When workers get pregnant or fall ill, they are sent back home at their own expenses. The documentary has been produced by Moritz Siebert in cooperation with World Economy, Ecology, development (WEED), for the European Procure IT Fair campaign.
Contact: http://www.vimeo.com/18617196
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
Mondays in the Sun (2002)
113m; Spain
Director: Fernando Leon de Aranoa
Cast: Javier Bardem, Luis Tosar and José Ángel Egido
Synopsis (IMDB): 2001: men without jobs, in the port city of Vigo. Six men worked in a shipyard, now shuttered. They pass the time at La Naval, a bar opened by one of them after the yard closed. They face their futures in makeshift ways: Rico has his bar and a sharp 15-year-old daughter, Reina has become a watchman and a moralizer, Lino fills out job applications, Amador drinks heavily and talks of his wife’s return; José is married to Ana, who works at a cannery and tires of being the breadwinner amidst José’s emasculated moodiness; Santa, the group’s conscience and troublemaker, occasionally fantasizes about Australia. In truth, all are joined like Siamese twins, adrift.
Contact: distributor: Lions Gate Films Alyssa Chinn Ph: 310 314-9597 Fax: 310 396-6041 achinn@lgecorp.com
Watch on YouTube
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