RSS

Category Archives: Drama

Canada’s Sweetheart: The Saga of Hal C. Banks (1985)

21 Feb

114m

Director: Donald Brittain

Synopsis (NFB): Harold Chamberlain Banks, a convicted felon and union strongarm, was recruited in 1949 to break up the communist-controlled unions that were blocking the country’s shipping industry and to replace them with a Canadian chapter of the Seafarers’ International Union (SIU). This gripping docudrama, based on eyewitness accounts and courtroom testimony, recalls thirteen turbulent years of violence and corruption during which the careers of 6 000 seamen were destroyed by the power of one man, Banks. Canada’s Sweetheart recounts the events leading up to 1962, when a small group summoned the courage to stand up to Banks and his organization. This challenge resulted in the government-appointed Norris Commission hearings–a landmark in Canadian labor history.

Wesbite: http://www.onf-nfb.gc.ca/eng/collection/film/?id=16132

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Drama, Labor History

 

Tags:

Captain Boycott (1947)

21 Feb

92m; Ireland

Director: Frank Launder

Cast: Stewart Granger, Kathleen Ryan and Cecil Parker

Synopsis (NYT): Briskly, this “Captain Boycott” tells us how tenant farmers in Parnell’s Irish Land League resisted an outrageously haughty landowner, Captain Boycott by name, with a technique of non-cooperation when he persisted in bleeding them for rents, and how this treatment, in the end, was more effective than an advocated plan of violence.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Drama, Farm & Food, Organizing, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

Caribe (2004)

21 Feb

90m; Costa Rica

Director: Esteban Ramírez

Synopsis: A married couple must cope with unemployment, sexual tensions, and the establishment of an American oil company in their Caribbean paradise.

Contact: http://www.caribelapelicula.com/

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Drama, Global Economy

 

The Catered Affair (1956)

21 Feb

92m; U.S.

Director: Richard Brooks

Cast: Bette Davis, Ernest Borgnine and Debbie Reynolds

Synopsis: At breakfast, Jane announces that she and Ralph are getting married the next week. All Jane and Ralph want is a small wedding with the immediate family and no reception. This is because Janes parents are poor and Jane and Ralph can borrow a car for their honeymoon. However, at dinner that night all Ralph’s parents talk about are the big weddings they gave their daughters and everything escalates. All of a sudden, it is a big wedding breakfast with hundreds of guests. The problem is that for 12 years, Tom has been saving money to buy his own cab and license, but now that he can, all of his money is going towards a wedding neither he, or Jane or Ralph really want.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Comedy, Drama, Romance, Women, Working Class

 

Cellulose (Celuloza) [1954]

21 Feb

120m; Poland

Director: Jerzy Kawalerowicz

Synopsis: A peasant’s son in Poland becomes politically radicalized, after moving to the big city to work in a cellulose factory.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Drama, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Politics

 

Choking Man (2006)

21 Feb

83m; U.S.

Director: Steve Barron

Synopsis: he social anxiety of a morbidly shy Ecuadorian dishwasher working in a Queens diner provides the psychological engine that powers this intense blend of drama and magical realism from the famed music video director. Newcomer Octavio Gómez Berríos gives a quietly effective performance in the “title” role. Also starring Mandy Patinkin.

Contact: Ghost Robot 373 Broadway, Suite F3 New York, NY 10013 T 212-343-0900 F 212-898-1119 C 646-234-1036 chokingman@ghostrobot.com

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Drama, Immigrants/Immigration, Service Workers

 

Christ in Concrete (aka Give Us This Day) [1949]

21 Feb

120m; U.K.

Director: Edward Dmytryk

Synopsis: Italian immigrant Germenio (blacklisted American actor Sam Wanamaker), exploits his fellow workers in dangerous construction work in order to provide for his own family. Set in NYC’s Little Italy (but shot entirely in England!), this compelling working class drama was the only film made by director Dmytryk after he refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee and before he became a “friendly” witness. immigrants; construction workers

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Construction Trades, Drama, Politics, Working Class

 

The Citadel (1938)

21 Feb

110m; U.S.

Director: King Vidor

Cast: Robert Donat, Rosalind Russell and Ralph Richardson

Synopsis (IMDB): Dr. Andrew Manson has recently qualified as a physician and accepts a position as an associate with an existing practice in a Welsh mining village. He is appalled not only at the conditions he finds there but also with the way health care is delivered. He finds himself to be the only working doctor in the practice but most of the income goes to the elderly physician who contributes nothing. He also finds typhoid to be rife but a local town council that will do nothing to improve the water supply something he and a colleague, Dr. Philip Denny, are quite prepare to deal with in a unique way. In the end, he is forced to leave the community when his experiments into work-related illnesses is misunderstood. His attempt to establish himself in London is a challenge but a chance meeting with a colleague, Dr. Frederick Lawford, sets him up nicely with the elite of British society. He finds however that the practice of medicine is filled with incompetents, hypocrisy and deceit.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Drama, Safety & Health

 

Tags:

City of Hope (1991)

21 Feb

129m; U.S.

Director: John Sayles

Synopsis: Urban politics, focusing on the tensions between urban redevelopment and community development in a city undergoing gentrification; based on Jersey City or Hoboken, NJ. It has some interesting scenes about organizing and politics.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Blacks, Drama, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Politics, Working Class

 

The Class(Entre les murs) [2008]

21 Feb

128m; France

Director: Laurent Cantent

Synopsis: Teacher and novelist François Bégaudeau plays a version of himself as he negotiates a year with his racially mixed students from a tough Parisian neighborhood.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Drama, Public Sector, Working Class

 
← Older posts
Newer posts →