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Category Archives: Drama

Macario (1960)

20 Apr

91m; Mexico

Director: Roberto Gavaldón

Cast: Ignacio López Tarso, Pina Pellicer and Enrique Lucero

Synopsis (IMDB): Poor, hungry peasant Macario longs for just one good meal on the Day of the Dead. After his wife cooks a turkey for him, he meets three apparitions, the Devil, God, and Death. Each asks him to share his turkey, but he refuses all except Death. In return, Death gives him a bottle of water which will heal any illness. Soon, Macario is more wealthy than the village doctor, which draws the attention of the feared Inquisition.

 
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Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Drama, Farm & Food, Working Class

 

Machuca (2004)

20 Apr

121m; Chile

Director: Andrés Wood

Cast: Matías Quer, Ariel Mateluna and Manuela Martelli

Synopsis (IMDB): A wonderful coming-of-age film set in Santiago, Chile during the last year of Salvador Allende’s democratic socialist government and the first years of the Augusto Pinochet regime.  The film follows two boys, one Pedro Machuca from the city’s poor slums and the other, Gonzalo Infante, from an upper-class family.  The two meet when a new government program starts placing children from poorer communities in more affluent schools and the two start to bond.

 
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Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Children, Drama, Labor History, Politics, Working Class

 

Made in Dagenham (2010)

20 Apr

113m; U.K.

Director: Nigel Cole

Cast: Sally Hawkins, Bob Hoskins and Andrea Riseborough

Synopsis: A dramatization of the 1968 strike at the Ford Dagenham car plant, where female workers walked out in protest against sexual discrimination.

 
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Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Comedy, Drama, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Organizing, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts, Women, Working Class

 

Maids (Domésticas) [2001]

20 Apr

85m; Brazil

Director: Fernando Meirelles, Nando Olival

Cast: Cláudia Missura, Graziela Moretto and Lena Roque

Synopsis (IMDB): Five maids in São Paulo are observed in this episodic, impressionistic film. The women interact with each other, ride busses, work, and have longings: Rai for a husband, Créo for her lost daughter, Roxane for a career in modeling. Quitéria is naive, a gull for thieves. Cida has a husband and also a lover. While each woman gets what she wishes for (more or less), it doesn’t always make things better. As Roxane says, no child sets out to become a maid. But once there, are all other doors closed?

 
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Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Drama, Service Workers, Women, Working Class

 

The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956)

20 Apr

153m; U.S.

Director: Nunnally Johnson

Cast: Gregory Peck, Jennifer Jones and Fredric March

Synopsis (IMDB): An ex-soldier faces ethical questions as he tries to earn enough to support his wife and children well.

 
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Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Drama, Romance, War, White Collar

 

Man of Marble (1977)

20 Apr

165m

Director: Andrzej Wajda

Cast: Krystyna Janda, Jerzy Radziwilowicz and Tadeusz Lomnicki

Synopsis (IMDB): In 1976, a young woman in Krakow is making her diploma film, looking behind the scenes at the life of a 1950s bricklayer, Birkut, who was briefly a proletariat hero, at how that heroism was created, and what became of him. She gets hold of outtakes and censored footage and interviews the man’s friends, ex-wife, and the filmmaker who made him a hero. A portrait of Birkut emerges: he believed in the workers’ revolution, in building housing for all, and his very virtues were his undoing. Her hard-driving style and the content of the film unnerve her supervisor, who kills the project with the excuse she’s over budget. Is there any way she can push the film to completion?

 
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Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Construction Trades, Drama, Politics, Working Class

 

Man of Iron (1981)

20 Apr

153m

Director: Andrzej Wajda

Cast: Jerzy Radziwilowicz, Krystyna Janda and Marian Opania

Synopsis (IMDB): Andrzej Wajda’s account of the events at the Gdansk shipyard in the summer of 1980. Winkiel (Marian Opania), a burned-out, alcoholic journalist is assigned to look into the activities of Maciek Tomzyk (Jerzy Radziwilowicz), the charismatic and articulate leader of striking shipyard workers. He turns out to be the son of Mateusz Birkut. The journalist makes use of her own reputation as a youthful radical, implying a solidarity with Tomzyk even as she searches for the dirty laundry the party bosses hope she’ll find. But as she interviews the labour leader’s associates and his detained wife, Agnieszka (Krystyna Janda), and hears of his travails and of his father’s death in the 1970 crackdown against the workers, Opania begins to feel his former idealism returning, forcing her to consider putting her own career at risk to side with the strikers.

 
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Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Drama, Labor History, Organizing, Politics, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts, Working Class

 

Man’s Castle (1933)

20 Apr

75m; U.S.

Director: Frank Borzage

Cast: Spencer Tracy, Loretta Young and Marjorie Rambeau

Synopsis: Love flourishes among the unemployed in a shack by New York’s East River, but our hero turns to crime when his wife becomes pregnant.

 
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Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Drama, Romance, Unemployment-Wages, Women, Working Class

 

Manito (2002)

20 Apr

78m; U.S.

Director: Eric Eason

Cast: Leo Minaya, Jessica Morales and Franky G

Synopsis (IMDB): Fifteen years ago, their Washington Heights neighborhood was dubbed the crack-cocaine capital of the world, but today it is transforming into one of the most vibrant, Spanish-speaking communities in the United States. While the drug dealers continue to disappear, their violent legacy still casts a shadow over the neighborhood and its residents. Junior, an ex-convict struggling to get his life back on track, is a product of this legacy. His younger brother Manny, the salutatorian of his high school class, embodies the hope of the future. On the night of his graduation party, Manny finds himself faced with an ill-fated decision that could change his life forever.

 
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Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Drama, Education, Immigrants/Immigration, Working Class

 

Margaret’s Museum (1995)

20 Apr

114m; U.S.

Director: Mort Ransen

Cast: Helena Bonham Carter, Kate Nelligan and Clive Russell

Synopsis (IMDB): In a town where half the men die down the coalpit, Margaret MacNeil is quite happy being single. Until she meets Neil Currie, a charming and sincere bagpipe-playing, Gaelic-speaking dishwasher. But no matter what you do, you can’t avoid the spectre of the pit forever.

 
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Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Drama, Romance, Women, Working Class

 

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