Directed by: Jonathan Olshefski
Running Time: – – –
Starring: N/A
Website: http://quest-documentary.com/
Synopsis: Filmed with vérité intimacy for over a decade, QUEST is the moving portrait of a family in North Philadelphia. Christopher “Quest” Rainey, along with his wife Christine’a, aka “Ma Quest,” open the door to their home music studio, which serves as a creative sanctuary from the strife that grips their neighborhood. Over the years, the family evolves as everyday life brings a mix of joy and unexpected crisis. Set against the backdrop of a country now in turmoil, QUEST is a tender depiction of an American family whose journey is a profound testament to love, healing and hope.
Category Archives: Genre
Quest – A Portrait of an American Family (2017)
Who is Dayani Cristal (2013)
Directed by: Marc Silver
Running Time: 1hr 25 min
Starring: N/A
Website: http://whoisdayanicristal.com/
Synopsis: An anonymous body in the Arizona desert sparks the beginning of a real-life human drama. The search for identity leads us back across a continent to seek out the people left behind and the meaning of a mysterious tattoo.
Strike (Eisenstein) 100th anniv of Russian Revolution
Directed by: Sergei M. Esenstein
Running Time: 1 hr 22 min
Starring: N/A
Website: N/a
Synopsis: A group of oppressed factory workers go on strike in pre-revolutionary Russia.
Sacco and Vanzetti (2007)
Directed by: Peter Miller
Running Time: 1 hr 34 min
Starring: N/A
Website: http://www.montereymedia.com/nogodnomaster/
Synopsis: The story of two Italian immigrant radicals who were executed in 1927 offers insights into present-day issues of civil liberties and the rights of immigrants.
No God, No Master (2013)
Directed by: Terry Green
Running Time: 1 hr 34 min
Starring: N/A
Website: http://www.montereymedia.com/nogodnomaster/
Synopsis: He becomes immersed in an investigation that uncovers an anarchist plot to destroy democracy. Inspired by true events of the 20s the film sets the stage for a timely thriller with resoundingly similar parallels to the contemporary war on terrorism and the role government plays to defeat it.
Native Land (1942)
Directed by: Leo Hurwitz & Paul Strand
Running Time: 1hr 20 min
Starring: N/A
Website
Synopsis:In dramatizations, we see a farmer beaten for speaking up at a meeting, a union man murdered in a boarding house, two sharecroppers near Fort Smith Arkansas shot by men deputized by the local sheriff, a spy stealing the names of union members, and a dead Chicago union man eulogized.
A combination of a documentary format and staged reenactments, the film depicted the struggle of trade unions against union-busting corporations, their spies and contractors. It was based on the 1938 report of the La Follette Committee‘s investigation of the repression of labor organizing.
Famous African-American singer, actor and activist Paul Robeson participated as an off-screen narrator and vocalist.
Metropolis (1927)
Directed by: Fritz Lang
Running Time: 148 min
Starring: N/A
Website: http://www.kinolorber.com/sites/metropolis/
Synopsis: In a futuristic city sharply divided between the working class and the city planners, the son of the city’s mastermind falls in love with a working class prophet who predicts the coming of a savior to mediate their differences.
The Willmar 8 (1981)
Directed by: Lee Grant
Running Time: 50 min
Starring: N/A
Website: http://www.newsreel.org/nav/title.asp?tc=CN0108
Synopsis: The Willmar 8 is Academy Award winner Lee Grant’s documentary about working women which has been featured on the front page of The Wall Street Journal, excerpted on 60 Minutes, and was broadcast nationally by PBS. The film tells the story of eight unassuming, apolitical women in America’s heartland–Willmar, Minnesota–who were driven by sex discrimination at work to take the most unexpected step of their lives and found themselves in the forefront of the struggle for women’s rights. Risking jobs, friends, family and the opposition of church and community, they began the longest bank strike in American history in a dramatic attempt to assert their own equality and self-worth
The Uprising of ’34 (1995)
Directed by: G eorge Stoney, Judith Helfand, and Susanne Rostock
Running Time: 88 min
Starring: N/A
Website: http://www.der.org/films/uprising-of-34.html
Synopsis: The Uprising of ’34 is a startling documentary which tells the story of the General Strike of 1934, a massive but little-known strike by hundreds of thousands of Southern cotton mill workers during the Great Depression. The mill workers’ defiant stance — and the remarkable grassroots organizing that led up to it — challenged a system of mill owner control that had shaped life in cotton mill communities for decades. Sixty years after the government brutally suppressed the strike, a dark cloud still hangs over this event, spoken of only in whispers if at all.
Through the voices of those on all sides, The Uprising of ’34 paints a rare portrait of the dynamics of life in mill communities, offering a penetrating look at class, race, and power in working communities throughout America and inviting the viewer to consider how those issues affect us today. The film raises critical questions about the critical role of history in making democracy work today.
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