by Harun Farocki. It is about life in an architecture studio directed by two people and follows the evolution of several projects at different levels of preparation.
Category Archives: Genre
Lessons from a University on the Fly (Leçons d’une université volante) (1982)
Belgium
dir. Jean- Pierre and Luc Dardenne
in French with English subtitles
Filmed for television in 1982, this series of intimate portraits of Polish immigrants living in Belgium marks the beginning of the Dardennes’ interest in the lives of immigrants.
For The War To End The Walls Should Have Crumbled (Pour que la guerre s’achève, les murs devaient s’écrouler)
1980
52 min
dir. Jean- Pierre and Luc Dardenne
Looking back to the momentous events of Belgium’s general strike in 1960, the film focuses on the efforts of Edmond G. and colleagues at the Cockerill steel plant in Seraing to organise and secretly publish a workers’ newspaper between 1961 and 1969.
Sunder Nagri (Beautiful City) (2003)
Director: Rahul Roy
English (subtitled), 78 min, 2003, India
http://magiclanternmovies.in/film/city-beautiful
Sunder Nagri (Beautiful City) is a small working class colony on the margins of India’s capital city, Delhi. Most families residing here come from a community of weavers. The last ten years have seen a gradual disintegration of the handloom tradition of this community under the globalisation regime. The families have to cope with change as well as reinvent themselves to eke out a living.
Radha and Bal Krishan are at a critical point in their relationship. Bal Krishan is underemployed and constantly cheated. They are in disagreement about Radha going out to work. However, through all their ups and downs they retain the ability to laugh.Shakuntla and Hira Lal hardly communicate. They live under one roof with their children but are locked in their own sense of personal tragedies.
Producer: Rahul Roy
Creative Crew
Camera: Rahul Roy
Editing: Reena Mohan
Sound: Asheesh Pandya
Rahul is a noted documentary filmmaker who has widely worked on the issues of labor and gender in India. His film The City Beautiful masterfully depicts the life of two families in an Indian working-class colony, focussing on the decline of traditional handloom industry because of globalization. His recent work The Factory (2015) is about the struggle of Maruti automobile workers in New Delhi. For more than two years, 147 workers from the Maruti Suzuki plant were kept behind bars without bail or any charge sheet being presented to the defence counsel. Rahul has followed their crisis and struggle from 2013 to 2015. Read more about the film in this Indian Express piece.
Director contact info: rahulroy63@gmail.com
The Divide (2015)
Director: Katharine Round
Running time: 75min
Country: UK
Year: 2015
Inspired by best-selling book The Spirit Level, Katharine Round’s film highlights the widening gulf between rich and poor. Exploring the reasons behind the ever-increasing wealth gap, its impact, and how inequality might even spell trouble for the rich, The Divide is a timely and prescient piece of globetrotting documentary cinema; both a think piece and a powerful warning.
Traceable (2014)
http://raindancefestival.org/features-2014/traceable/
This documentary examines the fashion industry process, and its conscience, from a designers’ perspective.
This environmental documentary has a powerful ethical story to tell and makes even the most exhausted eye-rollers sit up and listen.
The 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory in Bangladesh put faces on the term ‘garment factory workers’. With this as a backdrop, ‘Traceable’ looks at the local communities behind clothing industries that have retained distinctive crafts for generations. ‘Traceability’ is the aim to have a proper trail for every single step in the supply chain. As well as where, it wants consumers to be concerned with how garments are made. Thousands of hands in the process go untraceable because many farmers, seamstresses and printers simply do not have the technology to be contacted by email or phone.
Director Jennifer Sharpe follows Laura Seigel, a young designer fighting to connect the design world with anonymous artisans. Most designers do not have the time or enough commitment to nurture a direct relationship with the people who make their clothes. This documentary is partly anthropological, as Seigel designs with the creators hand-to-hand and negotiates with them on their own turf. Without being patronising or naive, ‘Traceable’ captures equal and harmonious working partnerships.
Precious Memories (2015)
Precious Memories has one act, 84 minutes long. I wrote the script but not the songs, which are by Sarah Ogan Gunning (“I Hate the Capitalist System”); her brother Jim Garland (“I Don’t Want Your Millions Mister,” the real point of which is that we do); and her half-sister Aunt Molly Jackson (“I Am A Union Woman”), plus two traditional ballads and excerpts from three gospel songs.
THE PLAY: Part memory play, part eulogy, part concert, this one-woman show written by legendary folk singer and community organizer Si Kahn traces the life of Sarah Ogan Gunning, an unsung hero of American folk/labor music history. The play finds Sarah alone in her Detroit basement apartment on the evening after her sister Aunt Molly Jackson’s funeral, as she attempts to set the record straight and say goodbye. Although Sarah Ogan Gunning is a name almost unknown to us today, her powerful songs about the coal mining region of Eastern Kentucky in the 1930’s were an influence on Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and other famous folk singers of her day.
Si Kahn <sikahn36@gmail.com
7 Chinese Brothers (2015)
76 min | Comedy | 28 August 2015 (USA)
Director/writer: Bob Byington
Stars: Jason Schwartzman, Stephen Root, Olympia Dukakis
Larry (Jason Schwartzman) is content with his dog Arrow and booze, barely tolerating anything or anyone else. His marginally successful relationships include his grandmother, who keeps him afloat financially, and his best friend Norwood, who provides him with pharmaceuticals. But a chance encounter at a Jiffy Lube gives Larry a beguiling new boss and the impetus to head in another direction for a while. This movie showcases all that may be needed to help a person get unstuck in life: love (or an unrequited crush), friendship (or someone your family likes better than you) and family (or in this case a grandmother who will support you whenever you get fired from a job).
This droll film, written and directed by Bob Byington, drifts aimlessly but appealingly with Mr. Schwartzman as its lost hero.
Boom and Bust: America’s Journey on the Erie Canal
Directed by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Paul Wagner and co-produced by Steve Zeitlin of CityLore and Erie Canal Museum Curator Daniel Ward, the film tells the story of industrial expansion and decline along the Erie Canal and examines its impact on the lives of workers in steel, grain, textiles and shipping. Wagner’s credits include The Stone Carvers and Windhorse. A meditation on economic cycles and the American Dream. The film surveys the macro-economics of industrial expansion and decline along the Erie Canal, and examines its impact on the lives of workers in steel, grain, textiles and shipping. In the wake of economic collapse, can the people of America’s cities find meaning and worth?
Paul Wagner, Charlottesville, VA: pw@paulwagnerfilms.com
Sherpa (2015)
96 min | Documentary | 2 October 2015 (USA)
Director/writer: Jennifer Peedom
A fight on Everest? It seemed incredible. But in 2013 news channels around the world reported an ugly brawl at 21,000ft as European climbers fled a mob of angry Sherpas. In 1953, New Zealander Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay had reached the summit in a spirit of co-operation and brave optimism. Now climbers and Sherpas were trading insults – even blows. What had happened to the happy, smiling Sherpas and their dedication in getting foreigners to the top of the mountain they hold so sacred? Determined to explore what was going on, the filmmakers set out to make a film of the 2014 Everest climbing season, from the Sherpas’ point of view. Instead, they captured a tragedy that would change Everest forever. At 6.45am on 18th April, 2014, a 14 million ton block of ice crashed down onto the climbing route through the Khumbu Icefall, killing 16 Sherpas. It was the worst tragedy in the history of Everest. The disaster provoked a drastic reappraisal about the role of the Sherpas in the Everest industry. SHERPA, tells the story of how, in the face of fierce opposition, the Sherpas united in grief and anger to reclaim the mountain they call Chomolungma.
‘Sherpa’ Delves Into a Risky Profession The documentary makers, who were at Mount Everest when 16 sherpas died in an ice avalanche in 2014, explore the tensions between these guides and their wealthy clients.
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