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Category Archives: Drama

Pioneer (2013)

27 Jan

Norway–just optioned for US remake by Clooney.  North Sea oil rig deep sea divers, workplace injury law suit.Pioneer

A thriller set at the beginning of the 1980’s Norwegian Oil Boom and centered on a diver whose obsession with reaching the bottom of the Norwegian Sea leads to tragedy.

PIONEER is set in the early 1980s, at the beginning of the Norwegian Oil Boom when enormous oil and gas deposits were discovered in the North Sea. Authorities aim to bring the oil ashore and Petter, a professional diver, has the discipline, strength and courage to take on the world’s most dangerous mission. But a sudden, tragic accident changes everything. Petter is sent on a perilous journey and gradually, he realizes that he is in way over his head and that his life is at stake.

Director: Erik Skjoldbjærg
Writers: Nikolaj Frobenius, Hans Gunnarsson, 3 more credits »
Stars: Aksel Hennie, Wes Bentley, Stephen Lang |

 
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Posted by on January 27, 2015 in Drama, Environment, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Technology

 

Small Homeland

24 Jan

2013
Drama
Italy
Director: Alessandro Rossetto
Writers: Caterina Serra, Alessandro Rossetto, Maurizio Braucci
111 Minutes

 
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Posted by on January 24, 2015 in Class, Drama, Immigrants/Immigration, Migrant workers, Themes, Working Class

 

Detachment

24 Jan

2011
Drama
Director: Tony Kaye
Writer: Carl Lund

A strong cast and good acting punctuate this drama about well-worn themes in contemporary cinema and educational discourse—failed public schools and the teachers allegedly indifferent to the pervasive, seemingly intractable social problems in them. Adrien Brody plays a substitute teacher who, in his one-month stint in a long-suffering public school, encounters teachers barely hanging on to their jobs and vocational motivation, and teenage students struggling with identity problems, abuse, and serious adult dilemmas such as prostitution. Hard-hitting indictment of not just the problems afflicting US public education but also some of the remedies advanced to solve them.

 
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Posted by on January 24, 2015 in Available Online, Children, Cities-Urban, Class, Drama, Education, Labor History, Netflix Watch Instantly, Occupation/Type of Work, Themes, White Collar, Working Class

 

Cesar Chavez

19 Nov

2014
102 min
Biography

Director: Diego Luna
Writers: Keir Pearson (screenplay), Timothy J. Sexton
Stars: Michael Peña, America Ferrera, Rosario Dawson

The film follows Chávez’s efforts to organize 50,000 farm workers in California, some of whom were braceros—temporary workers from Mexico permitted to live and work in the United States in agriculture, and required to return to Mexico if they stopped working. Working conditions are very poor for the braceros, who also suffer from racism and brutality at the hands of the employers and local Californians. To help the workers, César Chávez (Michael Peña) forms a labor union known as the United Farm Workers (UFW). Chávez’s efforts are opposed, sometimes violently, by the owners of the large industrial farms where the braceros work. The film touches on several major nonviolent campaigns by the UFW: the Delano grape strike, the Salad Bowl strike, and the 1975 Modesto march. 

 
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Posted by on November 19, 2014 in Biography, Drama, Farm & Food, Immigrants/Immigration, Labor History, Migrant workers, Netflix Watch Instantly, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

Eat Sleep Die

19 Nov

2012
Directed by Gabriela Pichler
Sweden
104 mins

Nermina Lukac’s electrifying performance as Raša is the heart of director Gabriela Pichler’s feature debut. A Montenegrin-born young woman living in rural Sweden, Raša is laid off from her job at a food-packing plant. Her ensuing job search pulls us through the maze of limited prospects and frustrating bureaucracy facing the country’s working immigrant population. Affable, resilient, street smart and soft-hearted, Raša’s natural magnetism draws us in completely. We feel every ounce of her disappointment, fear and elation as she soldiers on, looking for work. An Audience Award winner at the Venice Film Festival, EAT SLEEP DIE’s assured naturalism and political conviction single out Pichler as a bold, exciting new cinematic voice. Her film is a positive rallying cry for low-wage workers who dream of a life that won’t merely add up to the three verbs that form the film’s title.
– Mike Dougherty, American Film Institute 

 
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Posted by on November 19, 2014 in Class, Comedy, Discrimination: Racism, Sexism, etc, Drama, Farm & Food, Immigrants/Immigration, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Legal System, Unemployment-Wages, Women, Working Class

 

Factory Boss (“Da gong lao ban”)

19 Nov

2014
101m
China
Directed by Zhang Wei
With: Yao Anlian, Tang Yan, Zhao Ju, Huang Jingyi, Gao Xueqin, Yun Mengjie; Chen Liang. (Mandarin dialogue)

The title figure in “Factory Boss” is one who normally garners little sympathy, particularly in the West, where cheap Chinese labor has undercut local production. Yet helmer Zhang Wei and thesp Yao Anlian create a complex character virtually impossible not to identify with, at least partially: Caught between a rock and a hard place — the paper-thin profit margins offered by Western conglomerates vs. rising worker demands at home — he inevitably winds up treating everyone unfairly, including himself. For growing ranks of China watchers, “Factory Boss” offers an engrossing expose of the built-in impasses of global economics from an unexplored perspective.
Ronnie Scheib, Variety
http://variety.com/2014/film/reviews/film-review-factory-boss-1201300789/

 
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Posted by on November 19, 2014 in Big Business/Corporations, Drama, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Manufacturing, Technology, White Collar

 

Price Check (2012)

12 Feb

For Pete, settling down with a wife and son meant giving up his unstable musical career to work for a third-rate supermarket chain.

Cast: Parker Posey, Eric Mabius, Annie Parisse

 
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Posted by on February 12, 2014 in Comedy, Drama, Netflix Watch Instantly, Retail

 

Popieluszko – Freedom Is Within Us

03 Feb

Another contemporary take on a life story on  early-‘Solidarity’ union hero;  more about struggle for freedom than labour struggles
In 1984 Jerzy Popiełuszko, widely known as the “Solidarność-Priest” for his role in the resistance against communism, was murdered by agents of the Polish internal intelligence agency. This film debut attracted over 1,3 million cinema viewers in Poland.
http://www.filmfestivalcottbus.de/en/archive/2012/films/pgm_id=1296&film_id=970&seite=3

 
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Posted by on February 3, 2014 in Drama, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Labor History, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

Black Thursday (CZARNY CZWARTEK)

03 Feb

by Antoni Krauze (Poland) –  contemporary take on the tragic events when Gdansk shipyard workers were killed by police during strike of December 1970 – got a FIPRESCI PRIZE (FIPRESCI Prize for a film in the World Competition) award at 37th Montreal World Film Festival.

Still a painfully remembered event, the brutally suppressed shipyard strikes of December 1970 get a stirring, street-level dramatization from Antoni Krauze that focuses on the tragic story of Brunon Drywa and family. When protests spread among coastal towns, troops in Gdynia responded by firing on people on their way to work; the victims would include Drywa, who was shot in the back. Filming on historic locations in Gdynia, Krauze forcefully brings to the screen a rarely depicted yet pivotal chapter in Polish history.

 
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Posted by on February 3, 2014 in Drama, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Labor History, Safety & Health, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

Women’s Day (Dzien Kobiet)

03 Feb

Halina is promoted to store manager of the supermarket chain „Motylek“ („Butterfly“). But her life as chief is just transient when she finds herself being abandoned by the system for being overly humane. Social-critical feature film debut by the famous Polish musician Maria Sadowska.’ The chains’ name ‘Butterfly’ is a paraphrase of an existing Portuguese-owned chain of discount supermarkets in Poland, which were infamous for the treatment of the workforce until unionised by NSZZ “Solidarność”
http://www.filmfestivalcottbus.de/en/archive/2012/films/pgm_id=1269&film_id=992&seite=3

 
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Posted by on February 3, 2014 in Drama, Farm & Food, Philosophy, Retail, Service Workers, Women

 
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