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Category Archives: Genre

Union Maids (1976)

48m; U.S.

Director: Julia Reichert, James Klein and Miles Mogulescu

Synopsis: Traces the organizing activities of three working class women in the laundry, meat packing and garment industries in Chicago in the 1930s. Features the oral histories of 3 women labor activists involved in the workers’ movements in the early 1930s: Kate Hyndman, Stella Nowicki, and Sylvia Woods. The women are figures of dignity and beauty amid their experiences of social injustice.

Nominated for an Oscar in 1978 for best feature documentary, and winner in 1978 of the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics’ “Critics Award” for Best Short.

 

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Union Roadshow: Organising EPZ Workers in Indonesia (2009)

10m; Indonesia

Synopsis: It has always been extremely difficult for unions to organise EPZ workers, with employers and even governments crushing unionisation attempts. But in Indonesia, unions are helping workers to move from temporary contracts to permanent employment. Wages are increasing and so is union membership. Premiered at the International Metalworkers’ Federation’s World Congress, Union Roadshow shows that there are reasons to be optimistic about the possibility of unionising EPZs, and aims to inspire unions in other parts of the world to intensify their efforts to organise EPZ workers.

Spanish Version here:
Roadshow Sindical: Sindicalizar las zonas francas de Indonesia

 

Union at Work (1949)

30m; U.S.

Director: Textile Workers of America

Synopsis: Describes how the CIO organizes textile workers.

 

Union with a Heart (1974)

18m; U.S. 

Director: Brewery Workers Union

Synopsis: Celebrates the 75th anniversary of the Brewery Workers Union

 

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Unionism: From Journeymen Associations to the Teamsters (1980)

29m; U.S.

Synopsis: Educational film tracing the history of labor and the Teamsters.

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

 

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United Action: Story of the GM Tool & Die Strike 1939 (1940)

33m; U.S.

Director: Michael Martini

 

Up In The Air (2010)

108m; U.S.

Director: Jason Reitman

Cast: George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick

Synopsis: With a job that has him traveling around the country firing people, Ryan Bingham leads an empty life out of a suitcase, until his company does the unexpected: ground him.

 

Up the Ridge (2007)

55m; U.S.

Director: Nick Szuberla and Amelia Kirby

Synopsis: In 1999 Szuberla and Kirby were volunteer DJ’s for the Appalachian region’s only hip-hop radio program in Whitesburg, KY when they received hundreds of letters from inmates transferred into nearby Wallens Ridge, the region’s newest prison built to prop up the shrinking coal economy. The letters described human rights violations and racial tension between staff and inmates. Filming began that year and, though the lens of Wallens Ridge State Prison, the program offers viewers an in-depth look at the United States prison industry and the social impact of moving hundreds of thousands of inner-city minority offenders to distant rural outposts. The film explores competing political agendas that align government policy with human rights violations, and political expediencies that bring communities into racial and cultural conflict with tragic consequences. Connections exist, in both practice and ideology, between human rights violations in Abu Ghraib and physical and sexual abuse recorded in American prisons.

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Documentary, Legal System

 

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Up to a Certain Point (Hasta cierto punto) [1983]

68m; Cuba

Director: Tomás Gutiérrez Alea

Cast: Óscar Álvarez, Mirta Ibarra and Omar Valdés

Synopsis (IMDB): A theater director and script-writer falls for a female worker from the Havana docks, but his machismo, social and working conflicts, and the Cuban woman’s condition interfere with their relationship.

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

 

Uprising of 1934

How could such a pivotal moment in American history be kept a secret for 60 years? Textile workers recall with pride the long-supressed story of the General Textile Strike of 1934 when 500,000 Southern mill laborers walked off their jobs. George Stoney, Judith Helfand and Susanne Rostock’s probing film explores how the strike still impacts labor, power and economics in the South today.
http://www.pbs.org/pov/uprisingof34/