14m; U.S.
Director: Alex Willemin
Cast: John Iovino, Cyril Serrao and Drew Daly
Synopsis (IMDB): After being fired from his job, Lee is given a second chance by his boss and CEO of the company, Scott Anderson III. Unfortunately, instead of filling out forms, Lee must save Scott’s life.
Trailer
Available here: http://www.imdb.com/video/wab/vi1264557337/
80m; Ireland
Director: Risteard Ó Domhnaill
Synopsis: “The most dramatic clash of cultures in modern Ireland, the rights of farmers over their fields, and of fishermen to their fishing grounds, has come in direct conflict with one of the worlds most powerful oil companies. When the citizens look to their state to protect their rights, they find that the state has put Shell’s right to lay a pipeline over their own.
The Pipe is a story of a community tragically divided, and how they deal with a pipe that could bring economic prosperity or destruction of a way of life shared for generations.”
Contact: http://www.thepipethefilm.com/
Trailer
7m; Turkey
Director: Nazli Bayram
Synopsis: The short is about the increasing speed up of workers who are tied to machine production speeds. The murderous pace puts these workers in a nightmare situation where they lose their limbs, hands and their bodies are destroyed by increasing exploitation on the job
84m; U.S.
Director: Bill Donovan
Synopsis:
This video is based on the writings and speeches of Michael Harrington, who was the pre-eminent spokesman for socialism in the United States. More than thirty interviews with people as diverse as William F. Buckley, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Gloria Steinem, discuss the important issues raised by Harrington and the Democratic Socialist Party. Ordinary people struggling to earn a living or dependent on food stamps and other social services provide viewers with a glimpse into their every day lives and the choices they must make. Cities shown include Youngstown, Ohio, where 60,000 jobs in the steel and coal industry were lost and never replaced, and San Diego, where farm workers live in shacks without running water or a sewage system. Also discussed is the domination and control of many areas of life in the United States by large corporations and the failure of the public school system and health care. This brief history of socialism in America and the changes in the past few decades in American life presented raise many questions. – http://emro.lib.buffalo.edu/emro/emroDetail.asp?Number=819
90m; U.S./Nepal
Director: Kan Yan
Synopsis: The story of child laborers in Nepal is a story of ethnic oppression, simple cruelty and remarkable hope. The Price of Childhood seeks to explain this phenomenon through the narratives of those who live with child labor—children, parents, owners, activists, government officials, scholars, and normal folks we meet along the way. In better understanding the situation from these various perspectives, the film aims to assist in improving the lives of those who suffer.
Contact: http://www.priceofchildhood.org/
Trailer
<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/15004778″>Price of Childhood Trailer</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/kan”>Kan Yan</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>U.S.
Director: Ken Ross & Louis V. Galdieri
Synopsis: 1913 Massacre follows singer/songwriter Arlo Guthrie to the town of Calumet, a once-thriving mining town on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula still haunted by the tragic events that inspired Woody Guthrie’s ballad, ’1913 Massacre.’
On December 24, 1913, the striking copper miners of Calumet were gathered with their wives and children for a holiday party at the Italian Hall. After the festivities had begun, someone — to this day, no one knows who — yelled Fire!
Despite efforts to keep the Hall under control, panic took hold of the crowd. The miners, their wives and children made a mad rush for the stairs. In the ensuing chaos, seventy-four people were crushed and suffocated to death on the stairway. Fifty-nine of the dead were children. There was no fire.
In the version of events that found its way into Woody Guthrie’s song, the “copper-boss thug-men” had plotted to yell Fire! and were holding the door of Italian Hall shut, so that the miners and their families could not escape.
The town itself is still divided over exactly what happened. And no one can explain why they tore down the Italian Hall in 1984.
1913 Massacre captures the last living witnesses of the 1913 tragedy and reconstructs Calumet’s past from individual memories, family legends and songs, tracing the legacy of the tragedy to the present day, when the town –out of work, out of money, out of luck — still struggles to come to terms with this painful episode from its past.
Contact: http://1913massacre.com/about/
Trailer
77m; U.S.
Director: Anne Lewis & Mimi Pickering
Distributed by California Newsreel and Appalshop
Synopsis: “Anne Braden: Southern Patriot (1924-2006)” is a first person feature documentary completed May 1, 2012. Braden rejected her segregationist, privileged past to become one of the civil rights movement’s staunchest white allies. In 1954 she was charged with sedition by McCarthy-style politicians who played on fears of communism to preserve southern segregation. In 1963 she became one of only five white southerners whose contributions to the movement were commended by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his famed “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” A relentless labor and political organizer, she fought for transformation and liberation throughout her life. – http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/06/15/18715481.php
110m
Director: Gonzalo Arijon
Synopsis: In his 1971 standard work Open Veins in Latin America, Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano describes the centuries of economic exploitation of his part of the world. Almost 40 years later, Uruguayan documentary filmmaker Gonzalo Arijon reevaluates the situation in Eyes Wide Open — A Journey through Today’s South America. His search takes him from the soybean plantations of the Brazilian Amazon and the tin mines of Bolivia to the deep jungles of Ecuador. Arijon, winner of the Joris Ivens Award in 2007 for Stranded, shows how the current crop of leftist leaders in these countries are attempting to resist the squandering of natural resources by large, international companies. The principal culprits he identifies are the neoliberal ideology and the ensuing wave of privatizations. Arijon’s politically committed film allows the local populations to speak for themselves, interspersing this with archive footage of speeches by the likes of Hugo Chávez (Venezuela), Lula da Silva (Brazil), and Evo Morales (Bolivia). Galeano himself also talks — sometimes in poetic language — about how the rise of socialist governments in the early 21st century is benefitting Latin America, and what more can be done.
22m; U.S.
Director: Michael T. Miller and Maura Ugarte
Synopsis: When it comes to politics, retired coal miner Sebert Pertee sees one big problem: the rich keep getting richer while working people lose ground. As he canvasses for pro-union candidates in 2008, he finds his community more focused on the race of the Democratic presidential nominee than on their own interests.
In McDowell County, West Virginia, long a union and Democratic Party stronghold, the battle for white working-class voters is taking an ugly turn. As politicians and pundits fan the racial flames, Sebert finds that race-baiting has long been a tried and true tactic to divide the miners. He’s determined to change the conversation, even if it rankles his neighbors. Race-baiting and union values collide in this short film, as Sebert struggles to take the fight to the real enemy.
Contact: http://dividethemovie.com/?page_id=2
Trailer
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