138m; Holland
Director: Stijn Coninx
Synopsis: In the 1890s, Father Adolf Daens goes to Aalst, a textile town where child labor is rife, pay and working conditions are horrible, the poor have no vote, and the Catholic church backs the petite bourgeoisie in oppressing workers.
Contact: Jan Marijnissen, jmarijnissen@sp.nl (guy I met 8/14; will get me more info on Dutch labor films)
90m
Director: Dorothy Arzner
Synopsis: Judy O’Brien is an aspiring ballerina in a dance troupe. Also in the company is Bubbles, a brash mantrap who leaves the struggling troupe for a career in burlesque. When the company disbands, Bubbles gives Judy a thankless job as her stooge. The two eventually clash when both fall for the same man.
92m; Argentina
Director: Hugo del Carril
Synopsis: The brothers Santos and Rufino Peralta (of Carril and Laxalt) are used like animals in the workplace at the Parana Stop. There they encounter enormous hardship and inhuman conditions of work as a consequence of the immense greed of the managers. A worker’s rebellion is maturing, to the point that it is developed into trade union of workers who respond against their grief. Finally, the workers plot a counterattack and punish their corrupt employers.
112m; U.S.
Director: Julie Dash
Cast: Cora Lee Day, Alva Rogers and Barbarao
Synopsis: Languid look at the Gullah culture of the sea islands off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia where African folk-ways were maintained well into the 20th Century and was one of the last bastion of these mores in America. Set in 1902.
70m; Israel
Director: Ayelet Bargur
Synopsis: At-risk teens in Jerusalem apartment project struggle to maintain normal life and keep off the streets.
Contact: Ayelet Bargur, eyelet6@013.net 971-3-6041225; 972-52-2204734
115m; Italy
Director: Silvio Soldini
Synopsis: Well-to-do, sophisticated Italian couple face upheavals when the husband is fired by the company he founded. Exhausted by an unsuccessful job hunt, the husband lets himself go, alternating between vivacity and apathy and the growing distance between them eventually leads to a break-up. Only when they part will they realize that they risk losing their most precious possession: the love that binds them.
Contact: http://www.filmmovement.com/filmcatalog/index.asp?MerchandiseID=165 Film Movement, Cambria Matlow: Cambria@filmmovement.com; 212-941-7744 ext. 205
182m; U.S.
Director: Michael Cimino
Cast: Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, John Cazale
Synopsis: An in-depth examination of the way that the Vietnam war affects the lives of people in a small industrial town in the USA.
129m; Germany
Director: Olivier Assayas
Cast: Connie Nielsen, Gina Gershon and Chloë Sevigny
Synopsis: Two corporations compete for illicit 3D manga pornography, sending spies to infiltrate each other’s operations.
105m; USSR
Director: Vsevolod Pudovkin
Cast: Boris Livanov, Vasili Kovrigin and Aleksandr Chistyakov
Synopsis (IMDB): A wise and forgiving communist leader decides to send a young worker, Karl Renn, as an international delegate to the Soviet Union after the worker had deserted a picket-line and had expressed doubts about the methods of class struggle in in his own country
109m; U.S.
Director: David Frankel
Cast: Meryl Streep, Anne Hathaway,
Synopsis: A naive young woman comes to New York and scores a job as the assistant to one of the city’s biggest magazine editors, the ruthless and cynical Miranda Priestly.
THE LABOR FILM DATABASE 