26m; U.S.
Director: National Right to Work Committee
Synopsis: Anti-union film dramatizing a wildcat strike staged by the IAM in Princeton, Indiana in 1956-57.
Category Archives: Documentary
Año Nuevo (1981)
55m
Director: Todd Darling
Synopsis (WorldCat): Describes the living and working conditions of undocumented Mexican agricultural workers at the Año Nuevo flower ranch in San Mateo County, California. Documents the efforts of a group of these workers, fired when they attempted to join a union, to reach a settlement with the Año Nuevo owner through the U.S. legal system. Includes interviews with prominent scholars, attorneys and organizers.
Another World is Possible: Impressions of the 2002 World Social Forum
24m; U.S.
Director: Mark Dworkin and Melissa Young
Synopsis: What if 51,000 activists from 131 countries put their heads together to discuss what is wrong with the world and how to change it?
Contact: http://www.bullfrogfilms.com/catalog/awip.html
Appalachia: No Man’s Land (1981)
28m; U.S.
Synopsis: Filmed in Mingo County, WV. and Martin County, Ky, this documentary interviews the natives, organizers, and poets of Appalachia who were directly affected by coal mining in the area. Intereviews are inter cut with the scenes of destruction. Floods, black lung, and uncontrolled strip mining disasters resulted from the activities in the area and huge multinational corporations continue to be primary forces in the area. The postscript lists results of the arc land ownership study just published. Stars Wheeling Jesuit University president Rev. Hacala.
Argentina: Turning Around
38m; U.S. and Argentina
Director: Melissa Young
Synopsis: Argentinian workers run factories “recovered” from owners.
Asturian-US (2007)
52m;
Director: Luis Argeo; Chip Hitchcock
Synopsis: The town of Arnao (Asturias province, northern Spain) grew under the wing of the Royal Mining Company. After the closure of its mine and the limitations of its factory at the beginning of the 20th century, many of its employees immigrated to similar factories located far from the sea, at the foot of the mountains of West Virginia. Several new towns were created: Spelter and Anmoore. 90% of their population was Asturians. Luis Argeo traveled from Spain in spring 2006 to document the community with the assistance of Chip Hitchcock of WBPBS.
Contact: Luis Argeo” argeol@hotmail.com http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Luis+Argeo&search=Search
At Home in Utopia (2008)
133m; U.S.
Director: Michal Goldman
Synopsis (IMDB): During the economic boom of the 1920s, thousands of immigrant Jewish factory workers managed to build the house of their dreams, a cooperative apartment complex at the edge of Bronx Park. Then they were hit by the Great Depression. At Home in Utopia bears witness to an epic social experiment across two generations in the Coops – a place known as “little Moscow” – where people tried to change the American dream into one that included racial justice and workers’ rights.
Contact: Michal Goldman Michalman@aol.com Filmmakers Collaborative 397 Moody Street Waltham MA 02453 T 781 647-1102 F 781 647-1140
See It Now: Automation (June 9, 1957)
82m
Broadcast Date: June 9, 1957
Network: CBS
Synopsis (WorldCat): Filmed exploration of how automation was changing the way America worked and how computers and automatic machines were revolutionizing industry, including the replacement of workers by machines. Includes interviews with Walter Reuther, then president of the UAW and vice-president of the AFL-CIO, Thomas J. Watson Jr., then head of IBM, and others. An in-depth exploration of the beginning of the age beyond the Industrical Revolution. [With Edward Murrow]
The Awful Truth (1999-2000)
24 episodes; U.S.
Director: Michael Moore
Synopsis: Activist film director Micheal Moore hosts a show where he continues his crusade to expose wrongdoing by the high and mighty.
Bloody Mondays and Strawberry Pies (2008)
87m
Director: Coco Schrijber
Synopsis (Boston Globe): The Dutch filmmaker Coco Schrijber has handcrafted a rapturous, often profound visual essay about the metaphysics of time – about how we spend our lives fleeing from the silence of existence by filling our days with busy-ness. It’s a film to come back and touch in your thoughts for quite a while.
Using fluid pacing and some lovely visual rhyme schemes, Schrijber circles around a handful of subjects. A young German woman named Lena works at a baked-goods factory, glazing strawberry tarts and pensively wondering if this is where she’ll spend the next 30 years. There are interviews with 101-year-old Wall Street legend Irving Kahn and Nancy Wake, a dashing WWII British spy who is now an infirm 96. They have lived great lives that each acknowledges is turning to dust in the end.
With patience and surprisingly few pretensions, in fact, “Bloody Mondays’’ builds a case for boredom as a necessary antechamber to spiritual grace. It is the place where we can, if we’re willing, begin to contemplate everything we devote entire lives working to avoid: our coming deaths, our present purposes, and so on and so on, into the painter’s tireless blue infinite.
THE LABOR FILM DATABASE 