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Category Archives: Genre

All Points North

17 Jul

Documentary (Athens/ London 2013, 25 minutes)
Producer: BlueArts Film, Mizgin Müjde Arslan, Dir: Therese Koppe
Original Language: French, with English subtitles.
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“It certainly will be a different Europe, not like here in Greece”, states Laurent in an assuring voice. The dream of heading North is the driving motivation for Laurent and Ibrahim, two young men leaving their country of Senegal in search of a better life.As undocumented migrants, they find themselves trapped in Greece, bound to the Greek borders by the lack of immigration papers. Before leaving their homeland their impressions of Europe were very different from the harsh realities they faced once arriving. For migrants such as Laurent and Ibrahim, there is no stability in a better, safer land; their journeys to find such are continually ongoing.

 
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Posted by on July 17, 2014 in Blacks, Discrimination: Racism, Sexism, etc, Documentary, Immigrants/Immigration, Migrant workers

 

155 Sold

17 Jul

46 min; 2012, Greece, Greek in English subtitles
Directed by George Panteleakis
film website

Greece was selected to be the first European economic experiment with a massive austerity program to privatize and destroy social services. This destruction of jobs and public services led to a massive protest in May 2011 and this full contact documentary shows the struggle shot by the film maker and activists in the struggle. Thick clouds of smoke covered the angry protests around Syntagma Square (Constitution Square) on 28-29 June 2011, while a majority of 155 deputies of the Greek Parliament bowed down to the austerity agenda. The working class, retirees and students engaged in mass protests and faced violence against them by the police.

 
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Posted by on July 17, 2014 in Documentary, Politics, Public Sector, Unemployment-Wages

 

Empire of Shame

02 Jul

Director – Hong Li-gyeong (92 min) 2013, Korea

Empire of Shame is about the struggle of Samsung workers to defend their health and safety and get compensation from the company. The corporation refused to admit that workers were getting cancer from the chemicals and toxins that were used in the plants.

A total of 193 employees have applied for workers compensation for industrial diseases and 73 of these workers have already lost their lives to disease.

Workers are required to give direct proof of a casual link between their duties and their sickness. This makes it extremely difficult for worker who are very sick to get the treatment they need.

This film shows the struggle to get to the truth and to defend the health and safety of the workers.

http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_entertainment/624867.html

 
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Posted by on July 2, 2014 in Documentary, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Safety & Health

 

High Power

02 Jul

(27 min) by Pradeep Indulkar, India

This powerful film is about the lives of workers and the community at the Tarapur nuclear power plant, which was built fifty years ago in a poor rural community. Like other nuclear power plants around the world, people in the community were displaced and provided no real compensation but they were promised good jobs.

This, like the other promises according to the people of Tarapur, turned out to be a lie. They also become the victims of diseases directly caused by radiation and other toxins brought into their community by the plant

Their community, their lives and their work turn into a nightmare they are struggling against as are communities where nuclear plants have been built.

 
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Posted by on July 2, 2014 in Documentary, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Safety & Health, Technology

 

The Plundering

02 Jul

By Oliver Ressler (40 min.) 2013 Austria

Extreme levels of privatization can only be carried out under conditions where people are under severe pressure, as in the transformation of former Soviet republics towards independence and capitalism. Since the Rose Revolution in 2003, the former Soviet republic Georgia under went such a radical transformation. President Mikheil Saakashvili implemented one of the most extreme neoliberal projects in the world. Today, Georgia is 9th among 185 states on the World Bank list of “Ease of Doing Business” countries. This is creating an unstable situation in a radical, free-market economy with the liquidation of most social safety nets. Most Georgian residents are being driven into un-experienced levels of poverty.

The Plundering focuses on four cases of aggressive, state-property privatization policies in Tbilisi. Through interviews, it discusses the privatization of the water system in Tbilisi and of Tbilisi’s popular market, the Dezerter Bazaar. A newly emerging movement prevented the attempted sell-off of the National Scientific Library, and the destruction and conversion of the historical Gudiashvili Square in Tbilisi’s city center into a shopping mall.

Trailer: http://www.ressler.at/the_plundering/

 
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Posted by on July 2, 2014 in Collective Bargaining, Documentary, Unemployment-Wages

 

ASOTRECOL, The Struggle Against Transnationals in Colombia

02 Jul

(55 min.) 2013, Colombia
With tactics ranging from hunger strikes with lips stitched shut to a nearly 1,000-day sit-in at the U.S. Embassy, Colombian workers are putting the world’s attention on General Motors’ treatment of its workers. This film tells the incredible story of an association of injured workers who have taken on one of the most powerful corporations in the world, and have won victories they never thought were possible. The Obama administration pushed the US Colombian trade agreement with the argument that it would protect the workers of Colombia from assassinations and repression because of labor protections. Since the agreement was passed by the Congress and signed by President Obama the repression continues and US corporations like GM and Coca-Cola continue to injure and terrorize Colombian workers.

Injured workers from Asotrecol have also come to the United States to the headquarters of General Motors to demand justice and have not received justice. The UAW which owned shares in General Motors have also been silent about the treatment of the Colombian GM workers and the struggle continues.

 
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Posted by on July 2, 2014 in Big Business/Corporations, Documentary, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Safety & Health, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

Miners Shot Down (2014)

02 Jul

(85 min) 2014 by Rehad Desai (South Africa)

In August 2012, mineworkers in one of South Africa’s biggest platinum mines began a wildcat strike for better wages. Six days later the police used live ammunition to brutally suppress the strike, killing 34 and injuring many more. Using the point of view of the Marikana miners, Miners Shot Down follows the strike from day one, showing the courageous but isolated fight waged by a group of low-paid workers against the combined forces of the mining company Lonmin, the ANC government and their allies in the National Union of Mineworkers.  What emerges is collusion at the top, spiraling violence and the country’s first post-apartheid massacre. South Africa will never be the same again.
Film Website

 
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Posted by on July 2, 2014 in Collective Bargaining, Discrimination: Racism, Sexism, etc, Documentary, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

The Grand Seduction (2013)

02 Jul

The small harbor of Tickle Cove is in dire need of a doctor so that the town can land a contract to secure a factory which will save the town from financial ruin. Village resident Murray French (Gleeson) leads the search, and when he finds Dr. Paul Lewis (Kitsch) he employs – along with the whole town – tactics to seduce the doctor to stay permanently.

Director: Don McKellar
Writers: Michael Dowse, Ken Scott
Stars: Taylor Kitsch, Brendan Gleeson, Liane Balaban

 
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Posted by on July 2, 2014 in Comedy, Netflix Watch Instantly, Romance

 

Nae Pasaran! (They Won’t Pass)

29 Jun

This stunning story of global worker cooperation is told by the recounting of events some 35 years ago, as Augusto Pinochet, backed by the US government, murdered a democratically elected leader, Salvadore Allende. As thousands of union members, students, leftists and all manner of Allende supporters were rounded up into killing centers, Pinochet began using his small aircraft fleet to strafe and attack rebel holdouts in the countryside. Scottish union airplane engine mechanics (where the jets had been built) saw news footage of this brutality and decided to take action to save fellow workers they’d never even known about, much less met. A heroic and moving story.

Directed by: Felipe Bustos Sierra

http://www.scottishdocinstitute.com/films/nae-pasaran/

https://vimeo.com/71027635

 
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Posted by on June 29, 2014 in Documentary, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts, Working Class

 

Tangled Threads

29 Jun

“Tangled Threads” chronicles labor rights activist Kalpona Akter’s organizing efforts in Bangladesh’s garment industry before and after the Rana Plaza building collapse, which claimed the lives of at least 1,138 garment workers. It does so against the backdrop of two very different worlds: New York’s modeling industry, on the one hand, and Bangladesh’s garment industry, on the other. Produced by STZFilms.

Directed by: Sara Ziff

Sara Ziff is a New York-based filmmaker, fashion model, and labor activist. She co-directed and produced the feature documentary “Picture Me” (2009), which shed light on labor issues in the modeling industry, particularly sexual abuse. Currently she serves as co-founder and executive director of the Model Alliance, a nonprofit labor group for models working in the American fashion industry. Ziff first traveled to Bangladesh in 2012, when she began collaborating with the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity (BCWS) and the International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) to try to organize workers across fashion’s supply chain.

https://www.facebook.com/stzfilms

 

 
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Posted by on June 29, 2014 in Arts/Culture, Big Business/Corporations, Cities-Urban, Class, Consumerism, Documentary, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Retail, Safety & Health, Textile Industry, Women, Working Class

 

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