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
Category Archives: Genre
Time Goes By: 57th St. & MacCorkle Ave. North 1921-2007
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.
Thurmond, West Virginia (1996)
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.
Time to Tackle Climate Change (2010)
20m
Synopsis: Showcases trade unions´ concrete experiences, challenges, opportunities, and commitments for action on climate change and features contributions from over 45 trade union organizations from all over the world. Unions´messages for action highlight that the environment, employment, social justice and a just transition are all part of the same fight.
Contact: Julianna Angelova Sustainlabour International Labour Foundation for Sustainable Development Fundación Internacional Laboral para el Desarrollo Sostenible C/ Pedro Teixeira, 3 1ºC 28020 Madrid, SPAIN Tel: +34 91 4491045 jangelova@sustainlabour.
To Kill a Priest (1988)
117m; U.S.
Director: Agnieszka Holland
Cast: Christopher Lambert, Ed Harris and Joss Ackland
Synopsis (IMDB): A young priest speaks out against the Communist regime in Poland and is killed for it.
To Save the Land and the People (1999)
59m; U.S.
Director: Anne Lewis
Synopsis: Strip or “surface” mining – where coal is blasted and scraped from the mountain surface – increased dramatically in the Appalachian region in 1961 when the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) signed contracts to buy over 16 million tons of strip-mined coal. Though cheaper for the buyer than deep-mined coal, the damage done by strip mining was far reaching and had immediate impact on coalfield residents. To Save the Land and People is a history of the early grassroots efforts to stop strip mining in eastern Kentucky, where “broad form” deeds, signed at the beginning of the 20th Century, were used by coal operators to destroy the surface land without permission or compensation of the surface owner. The program focuses on the Appalachian Group to Save the Land and People, whose members used every means possible – from legal petitions and local ordinances, to guns and dynamite – to fight strip mining. The documentary makes a powerful statement about the land and how we use it, and how its misuse conflicts with local cultures and values.
Contact: Anne Lewis 512-656-0507 (cell) http://www.annelewis.org
To Sleep with Anger (1990)
101m; U.S.
Director: Charles Burnett
Cast: Danny Glover, Paul Butler and DeVaughn Nixon
Synopsis (Wikipedia): Harry Mention (Danny Glover), an enigmatic drifter from the South, comes to visit an old acquaintance named Gideon (Paul Butler), who now lives in South-Central Los Angeles. Harry’s charming, down-home manner hides a malicious penchant for stirring up trouble, and he exerts a strange and powerful effect on Gideon and his thoroughly assimilated black, middle-class family, including wife Suzie (Mary Alice) and sons Junior (Carl Lumbly) and Babe Brother (Richard Brooks).
After Gideon suffers a stroke, Harry’s influence over the family grows, in particular over Babe Brother, the youngest son. Harry introduces him to a lifestyle of drinking and gambling, and encourages him to leave his wife to join Harry and his friends on the road. However, before Babe Brother gets a chance to leave, Junior confronts him. They fight, and their mother gets stabbed in the hand trying to separate them. After taking her to the hospital, Babe Brother decides to stay with his family instead of joining Harry. When Harry comes back to collect some things, he slips on some marbles belonging to Babe Brother’s son, and dies. Soon after, Gideon gets out of his bed for the first time in months, causing the viewer to question the relationship between Harry’s presence in the house and Gideon’s sickness.
To The Bitter End
58m; South Korea
Director: Jun-sik
Synopsis: Korean workers fight Worker Dispatch Law
To The Workers of The World (2002)
4m; U.S.
Director: Tammy Gold
Synopsis: Tribute to workers who died at World Trade Towers in 2001.
Contact: 212-772-4953; tgold@hunter.cuny.edu tamigold@mindspring.com
Tobacco Road (1941)
84m; U.S.
Director: John Ford
Cast: Charley Grapewin, Gene Tierney and Marjorie Rambeau
Synopsis (IMDB): Shiftless Jeeter Lester and his family of hillbilly stereotypes live in a rural backwater where their ancestors were once wealthy planters. Their slapstick existence is threatened by a bank’s plans to take over the land for more profitable farming; subplots involve the affairs and marriages of son Dude and daughter Ellie May.
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