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Category Archives: Genre

They Don’t Wear Black Tie (Eles Não Usam Black-Tie) [1981]

13 Jun

122m; Brazil

Director: Leon Hirszman

Cast: Gianfrancesco Guarnieri, Fernanda Montenegro and Carlos Alberto Riccelli

Synopsis (NYT): At the beginning of the Brazilian film “They Don’t Wear Black Tie,” a middle-class boy and girl are making plans to live happily ever after. Maria (Bete Mendes) is pregnant by the handsome young Tiao (Carlos Alberto Ricelli), and that helps accelerate their plan to rush into marriage. Everything looks rosy. “They Don’t Wear Black Tie” is an extremely successful politically aware drama about how the bloom falls off the rose . . . The film chronicles the process by which Maria realizes that Tiao is not the man she thought he was. Her understanding of Tiao’s weakness is heightened by the political activity surrounding a local strike, at the factory where Tiao, his father and Maria are all employed. When the labor trouble begins, Tiao manfully wanrs Maria that she’d better stay home, exhibiting just the hind of stubborn sexism this courageous heroine refuses to tolerate. Later on, he violates the most basic tenets of his upbringing by becoming a scab. And Maria declares that her child will be bery, very proud of his grandfather, even if he never has a kind thought about his father at all.

“They Don’t Wear Black Tie” is an outstandingly good film in this year’s New Directors/New Films lineup.

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Drama, Manufacturing, Romance, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

They Drive by Night (1940)

13 Jun

93m; U.S.

Director: Raoul Walsh

Cast:  George Raft, Humphrey Bogart and Ann Sheridan

Synopsis (IMDB): Brothers Paul and Joe Fabrini run a trucking business in California mainly shipping fruit from farms to the markets in Los Angeles. They struggle to make ends meet in the face of corrupt businessmen and intense competition. They are forced into driving long hours and one night pick-up waitress Cassie Hartley who’s just quit her job at a truck stop. The three of them witness the death of a mutual acquaintance when he falls asleep at the wheel. This has a profound effect on Paul and Joe and they become determined to find a way to make the business pay so they can quit.

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Crime-Action, Themes, Working Class

 

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They Live (1988)

13 Jun

93m; U.S.

Director: John Carpenter

Cast: Roddy Piper, Keith David and Meg Foster

Synopsis (IMDB): Nada, a down-on-his-luck construction worker, discovers a pair of special sunglasses. Wearing them, he is able to see the world as it really is: people being bombarded by media and government with messages like “Stay Asleep”, “No Imagination”, “Submit to Authority”. Even scarier is that he is able to see that some usually normal-looking people are in fact ugly aliens in charge of the massive campaign to keep humans subdued.

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Consumerism, Global Economy, Horror

 

They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

13 Jun

129m; U.S.

Director: Sydney Pollack

Cast: Jane Fonda, Michael Sarrazin and Susannah York

Synopsis: Gloria is a young woman of the Depression. She has aged beyond her years and feels her life is hopeless, having been cheated and betrayed many times in her past. While recovering from a suicide attempt, she gets the idea from a movie magazine to head for Hollywood to make it as an actress. Robert is a desperate Hollywood citizen trying to become a director, never doubting that he’ll make it. Robert and Gloria meet and decide to enter a dance marathon, one of the crazes of the thirties. The grueling dancing takes its toll on Gloria’s already weakened spirit, and she tells Robert that she’d be better off dead, that her life is hopeless – all the while acting cruelly and bitterly, alienating those around her, trying to convince him to shoot her and put her out of her misery. After all, they shoot horses, don’t they?

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Drama, Unemployment-Wages, Women, Working Class

 

They Were Not Silent: The Jewish Labor Movement and the Holocaust (1998)

13 Jun

30m; U.S.

Director: Roland Millman

Synopsis (Wikipedia): They Were Not Silent is a documentary about the Jewish Labor Committee’s anti-Nazi movement in America before, during and after World War II. The film features rare archival footage and photographs along with interviews with labor veterans, Holocaust survivors and scholars. It explores how international Jewry worked to help Jews and non-Jews in Germany, Poland, and elsewhere in Europe.

Contact: Gail Malmgreen 212-998-2636 gail.malmgreen@nyu.edu

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Documentary, Labor History, Organizing, Politics, War

 

Thirst (2004)

13 Jun

62m; U.S.

Director: Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman

Synopsis: Community resistance to water privatization, union-community coalitions, public employees, need for public investment in infrastructure.

Contact: Alan Snitow & Deborah Kaufman Snitow-Kaufman Productions 2600 Tenth Street #603 Berkeley, CA 94710 510 841-1068 amsnitow@igc.org http://www.snitow-kaufman.org

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Documentary, Environment, Organizing

 

This Is Just The Start (2009)

13 Jun

4m; U.K.

Director: Gary Williams

Synopsis: On 10th October 2009, UNISON organizers met with Chartwell’s (Compass Group plc) Sheffield City school catering staff with the aim of starting to get organized and win their proper pay and conditions.

Contact: G.Williams@unison.co.uk

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Documentary, Education, Organizing, Service Workers

 

Tillie Olsen: A Heart In Action (2006)

13 Jun

30m; U.S.

Director: Ann Hershey

Synopsis: Shows the explosive experiences of writer and activist Tillie Olsen in her youth that helped form her views.

Contact: http://www.laborfest.net/2006schedule.htm

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Documentary, Labor History, Women

 

Time Goes By: 57th St. & MacCorkle Ave. North 1921-2007

13 Jun

2007 35 mins. Joe Hodges

A second glass plant existed right across the street from LOF on MacCorkle Ave. SE in the Kanawha City section of Charleston. This plant became the largest producer of glass bottles in the world by the 1930s. In 1917, just one year after the LOF plant was founded, the Owens-Illinois Company began manufacturing fruit jars, jars for industrial products, and after Prohibition ended, beer bottles. This film tells the story of WV native son Michael Joseph Owens, the inventor of the bottle-making machine that revolutionized the glass industry worldwide. Photos of workers are shown, and videotape-showing reunions are included. The plant closed in 1963. Many workers at this plant would walk across the street and work at the LOF plant when things were slow.

Access: Joseph D. Hodges, 5426 Lancaster Ave. SE, Charleston, WV 25304, 925-1819, joe1819@suddenlink.net or David Radford, 2950 Pine St., Belle, WV, 595-1090. The WV State Archives has copies of both films LOF and OI films, made available to reseachers. Copies of both LOF and OI glass factory films should be available from WVLC and KCPL in summer 2009.

 

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Documentary, Manufacturing

 

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Thurmond, West Virginia (1996)

13 Jun

22m; U.S.

Director: Laura Harrison

Synopsis: This films documents the falling fortunes of Thurmond, a coal town. Thurmond was once a thriving community, yet today it stands as a ghost town in the making. It was also the main filming location for John Sayles’ film “Matewan.”  This film, directed by Laura Harrison, looks at the history the town, while subtly probing deeper issues about the importance of community and the identity of a place.

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Documentary, Entertainment Industry, Unemployment-Wages

 

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