28m
Synopsis: Traces history of the Fenton Art Glass Company, emphasizing the importance of the relationship between the Fenton management and the glass workers who produce the products.
More information available at: http://www.fentonartglass.com/
60m; U.S.
Director: Bette Jean Bullert
Synopsis: This portrait aired on several major public television stations in the late 1990s. It captures the life and music of the composer of “Joe Hill,” “Black and White,” “Ballad for Americans” and other songs that convey the hopeful, progressive spirit of his generation. Rich in archival footage, this documentary includes performances of Robinson’s songs by Joan Baez, Frank Sinatra, Paul Robeson, Josh White, Three Dog Night, Peter, Paul & Mary, and of course, Earl himself. Judy Collins narrates.
85m; U.S.
Director: Martin Ritt
Cast: John Cassavetes, Sidney Poitier and Jack Warden
Synopsis: Two New York City longshoremen Axel Nordmann, an Army deserter and Tommy Tyler, an easy-going freight car loader whose growing friendship is threatened by Charles Malik, a notably repellent punk.
110m; U.K.
Director: Lewis Gilbert
Cast: Michael Caine, Julie Walters and Michael Williams
Synopsis: A young wife decides to complete her education and take her exams. She meets a professor who teaches her to value her own insights while still being able to beat the exams. The change in her status causes friction between her and her husband.
97m; Australia
Director: Mark Joffe
Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Ben Mendelsohn and Alwyn Kurts
Synopsis (IMDB): An expert on productivity shows wacky workers in 1966 Australia how to run their moccasin factory like clockwork, despite laying off more than half the workforce.
471m
Director: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Synopsis: West German television series on the lives of factory tool makers.
119m; U.S.
Director: John Sayles
Cast: John Cusack, Charlie Sheen, David Strathairn, Christopher Lloyd, Studs Turkel
Synopsis: A dramatization of the Black Sox scandal when the underpaid Chicago White Sox accepted bribes to deliberately lose the 1919 World Series.
103m; France
Director: Xabi Molia
Synopsis: Elsa scrapes through to the end of each month by doing odd jobs. At night, she cleans buses in a deserted coach station, during the day she looks after a child for a young couple. Hoping to land a job with a contract, she attends interviews with disastrous results. Her neighbour Mathieu is also looking for work and seems to have achieved perfection in the art of failing interviews. One day, Elsa is evicted from her flat. She finds herself faced with a life of uncertainty with only a potted plant for company. Mathieu occasionally makes her offers of love that she’s not ready to accept. The temptation to leave it all behind leads Elsa to a forest in which Mathieu has already found refuge and set up camp.
51m; Canada
Director: Min Sook Lee
Synopsis: El Contrato (The Contract) follows Teodoro Bello Martinez, a father of four living in Central Mexico, and several of his countrymen as they make an annual migration to southern Ontario. For eight months of the year the town’s population absorbs 4000 migrant labourers who pick tomatoes for conditions and wages no local will accept. Under a well-meaning government program that allows growers to monitor themselves, the opportunity to exploit workers is as ripe as the fruit they pick. Only men with families to support and no more than an elementary school education need apply. Grievances – among them abusive bosses, unhealthy conditions and paying for benefits they don’t receive – are deflected by a long line of others “back home” who are willing to take their place. Despite a fear of repercussions, the workers voice their desire for dignity and respect, as much as for better working conditions. El Contrato ends as winter closes in and the Mexicans return home. Back in the embrace of their families some pledge, not for the first time and possibly not the last, that it’s their final season in the north. DVD of 2003 original.
141m; U.S.
Director: Gregory Nava
Cast: Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez, David Villalpando and Ernesto Gómez Cruz
Synopsis: Mayan Indian peasants, tired of being thought of as nothing more than “brazos fuertes” (“strong arms”, i.e., manual laborers) and organizing in an effort to improve their lot in life, are discovered by the Guatemalan army. After the army destroys their village and family, a brother and sister, teenagers who just barely escaped the massacre, decide they must flee to “El Norte” (“the North”, i.e., the USA). After receiving clandestine help from friends and humorous advice from a veteran immigrant on strategies for traveling through Mexico, they make their way by truck, bus and other means to Los Angeles, where they try to make a new life as young, uneducated, and undocumented immigrants.
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