97 min | Comedy, Drama | 6 March 2015 (USA)
Director/writer: Joel Potrykus
Stars: Joshua Burge, Joel Potrykus, Teri Ann Nelson
Marty is a caustic, small-time con artist drifting from one scam to the next. When his latest ruse goes awry, mounting paranoia forces him from his lousy small town temp job to the desolate streets of Detroit with nothing more than a pocket full of bogus checks, a dangerously altered Nintendo® Power Glove, and a bad temper. Albert Camus meets Freddy Krueger in BUZZARD, a hellish and hilarious riff on the struggles of the American working class.
J.T. Haines, Tommy Haines & Andrew Sherburne, co-directors
84 min | Documentary, Drama | 13 April 2013 (USA) http://www.goldfevermovie.com/
productions@northlandfilms.com
Gold, an obsession of men and nations; a symbol of wealth and power. But for Diodora, Gregoria, Crisanta and the people living near the Marlin Mine in Guatemala’s highlands, gold represents oppression, intimidation, pollution and even murder. With the rising price of gold, the mine’s owner, Goldcorp, posts record profits, while these courageous women live in resistance to the mine’s unstoppable hunger.
Set in Bangladesh, the documentary follows 20-year-old Nasir, a social worker in the slums, who moved from a rural village to the city. He reflects and recounts on his childhood working in rubbish dumps and sweatshops from the age of eight, how he grew up, and achieved his dream of an getting an education and respect within his community. A social worker, he wanders the alleyways of Dhaka‘s Korrail slum searching for working children to try to convince to enroll in school for a better future. As Nasir recounts his life, the documentary also features several children, parents and employers, who mirror his past.
As it continues its own industrial revolution, Bangladesh is, in many ways a perfect example of what we refer to as ‘a developing nation’. Mass E Bhat explores this shifting society through the eyes of its children. In the young people of the slums, villages, factories and streets, we see a generation forced to grow up at an incredibly early age, to whom work and responsibility are part of everyday life. A series of vignettes observing these children, their parents, employers and teachers, paint a vivid portrait of a nation in transition, the cost of development and the true meaning of childhood.
Hard-hitting and unforgettable, Mass-e-Baht explores the unseen impact of capitalism’s invisible hand. Framed around the inspiring life of Nasir, a child labourer turned social worker from Bangladesh, Mass-e-Bhat presents a portrait of the developing world as experienced by it’s children. Having worked under abysmal conditions in sweat shop garment factories at the age of 8, Nasir now rescues “working children” by enrolling them in school. Moving stories about the people who live in poverty to produce our clothes are presented alongside Nasir’s quest to better his life, and the lives of other child labourers. http://www.rainbowcollective.co.uk
Director: Mahmoud Kaabour
75 min | Documentary, Music |
With unprecedented access, this creative documentary paints a complete portrait of life in Dubai’s labor camps, told entirely in the voices of the laborers as we follow their participation in a huge Bollywood singing competition http://www.champofthecampmovie.com/
On Manhattan’s Lower East Side, in a series of four nondescript brick tenement buildings, sits the Streit’s Matzo factory. In 1925, when Aron Streit opened the factory’s doors, it sat at the heart of the nations largest Jewish immigrant community. Today, in its fifth generation of family ownership, in a rapidly gentrifying Lower East Side, it remains as the last family owned matzo factory in America. (note: the factory closed in April 2015; workers will have to commute to New Jersey)
In this timely thriller, charismatic and ruthless businessman, Rick Carver (Academy nominee Michael Shannon), is making a killing by repossessing homes – gaming the real estate market, Wall Street banks and the US government. When he evicts Dennis Nash (Golden Globe nominee Andrew Garfield), a single father trying to care for his mother (Academy Award nominee Laura Dern) and young son (newcomer Noah Lomax), Nash becomes so desperate to provide for his family that he goes to work for Carver – the very man who evicted him in the first place. Carver promises Nash a way to regain his home and earn security for his family, but slyly seduces him into a lifestyle of wealth and glamour. It is a deal-with-the-devil that comes with an increasingly high cost – on Carver’s orders, Nash must evict families from their homes. As Nash falls deeper into Carver’s web, he finds his situation grows more brutal and dangerous than he ever imagined.
Directed by Laura Kissell
72 min | Documentary, News | 5 April 2014 (USA)
AMERICANS CONSUME NEARLY 20 BILLION NEW ITEMS OF CLOTHING EACH YEAR. YET FEW OF US KNOW HOW OUR CLOTHES ARE MADE, MUCH LESS WHO PRODUCES THEM. COTTON ROAD FOLLOWS THE COMMODITY OF COTTON FROM SOUTH CAROLINA FARMS TO CHINESE FACTORIES TO ILLUMINATE THE WORK AND INDUSTRIAL PROCESSES IN A GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN.
What does a rural town in South Carolina have to do with China? Americans consume nearly twenty billion new items of clothing each year, and at least one billion of them are made in China. Cotton Road uncovers the transnational movement of cotton and tells the stories of worker’s lives in a conventional cotton supply chain. From rural farms in South Carolina to factory cities in China, we span the globe to encounter the industrial processes behind our rapacious consumption of cheap clothing and textile products. Are we connected to one another through the things we consume? Cotton Road explores a contemporary landscape of globalized labor through human stories and provides an opportunity to reflect on the ways our consumption impacts others and drives a global economy.
Iconic and ubiquitous, thousands of manhole covers dot the streets of New York City. Enlivening the everyday objects around us, this short film is a glimpse of the working lives of the men behind the manhole covers in New York City.
88 min | 30 July 2015 (Argentina)
A series of seven vignettes about different people dealing with their every day problems in modern day Iran, that are loosely related to each other.
85 min | Adventure, Comedy, Fantasy | 5 June 2015 (USA)
Director: Craig Goodwill
Writers: Christopher Bond, Jessie Gabe (story)
Stars: Zoie Palmer, Julian Richings, Rob Ramsay
In Patch Town’s dark modern fairy tale, newborn babies are plucked from cabbage patches, turned into plastic dolls, and sold as playthings in a nightmarish, oppressive society. Jon (Rob Ramsay), a discontented factory worker slaving away on a baby-harvesting production line, uncovers a secret from his past that sends him searching for his long-lost mother (Zoie Palmer). As Jon embarks on his journey with his loving wife Mary (Stephanie Pitsiladis), the sinister Child Catcher (Julian Richings) and his diminutive beet-munching henchman (Ken Hall) throw a wrench into his plans. An eye-popping fantasy-adventure, quirky comedy, and rousing musical rolled into one, Patch Town “combines Soviet-era iconography, Eastern European folklore and Western consumer-culture critique with a dash of song and dance” (Peter Debruge, Variety).
The director Craig Goodwill’s musical fairy tale, inspired by Eastern European folklore, features vivified toys that revolt against an unscrupulous corporate overlord.
– NYT review
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