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Category Archives: Genre

Which Way Is Up? (1977)

13 Jun

94m; U.S.

Director: Michael Schultz

Cast: Richard Pryor, Lonette McKee and Margaret Avery

Synopsis (IMDB): Richard Pryor is playing three different roles here. The first being a poor orange picker named Leroy Jones who gets laid off when by mistake he joins the worker’s union during one of their demonstrations. Afterwards he is forced to leave his wife and family behind which also includes Leroy’s father (also played by Pryor) to go to Los Angeles. Leroy ends up working for the same company that fired him back home. He is a manager at the company but he is now distant from his former pals. He meets and falls in love with Vanetta who is a labor organizer which leaves him splitting time between his wife Annie Mae and Vanetta. When Leroy finds out that the Reverend Lenox Thomas (also played by Pryor) has got his wife pregnant while he was absent, he then make the moves on the reverend’s wife.

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Blacks, Collective Bargaining, Comedy, Working Class

 

Whistle While You Work (2007)

13 Jun

19m; U.S

Director: Ryan Claypool

Synopsis: Draws a connection between the historical creation of workers and the economic condition they are in today.

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

 

The Whistle at Eaton Falls (1951)

13 Jun

96m; U.S.

Director: Robert Siodmak

Cast: Lloyd Bridges, Dorothy Gish and Carleton Carpenter

Synopsis (IMDB): Lloyd Bridges stars as a union man at a small plastics plant in New Hampshire who is suddenly thrust into a management position when the owner is killed in a car accident. The film examines the tenuous relationship between management and labor and the effects on outside agitators.

The plant is the lifeblood of this small town, but the owner has fallen behind in bank payments and has outdated machinery. He’s losing contracts. Once Bridges takes over he decides to totally shut down while they try to land some contracts. He also tries to come up with an automatic cutter so that the plastic parts can be produced faster and cleaner. But an outsider (Murray Hamilton) keeps stirring up workers against Bridges and the widowed owner (Dorothy Gish). What ensues is a race against time as the workers become more and more disgruntled.

In a rare starring role, Bridges is excellent. Despite star billing, Gish has a smallish part. Other notable actors include Ernest Borgnine, Anne Francis, Arthur O’Connell, Anne Seymour, Carleton Carpenter, Parker Fennelly, Russell Hardie, Doro Merande, and James Westerfield.

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Collective Bargaining, Drama, Manufacturing, Organizing

 

Who Killed Chea Vichea? (2010)

13 Jun

85m; 

Director: Bradley Cox

Synopsis: In 1999, Cambodian garment workers demanding decent wages and working conditions found their leader in Chea Vichea. As president of Cambodia’s free trade union, he stood with them despite beatings and death threats. Until a sunny morning in 2004. As Vichea read the paper at a sidewalk newsstand, three bullets silenced him forever. Under intense international pressure, the police arrested two men and extracted a confession. They were sentenced to 20 years each. But did they have anything to do with the crime? What seems at first to be justice done starts to look like a frame-up. And the implications reach far beyond the police station and the courtroom: to the headquarters of the ruling party and to the garment trade that is Cambodia’s economic lifeblood. Director Bradley Cox shot Who Killed Chea Vichea? over five years, covering events as they happened and tracking down witnesses in a country where knowing too much can cost you your life. Who Killed Chea Vichea? is a highly charged murder mystery, a political thriller, and a documentary like no other.

Contact: http://www.whokilledcheavichea.com/

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Documentary, Global Economy, Organizing

 

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Who Killed Vincent Chin? (1989)

13 Jun

Directed by Christine Choy and Renee Tajima-Pena, USA, Academic Video Store, 1989 (82 minutes)
https://www.academicvideostore.com/video/who-killed-vincent-chin

Synopsis (IMDB): This film recounts the murder of Vincent Chin, an automotive engineer mistaken as Japanese who was slain by an assembly line worker who blamed him for the competition by the Japanese auto makers that were threatening his job. It then recounts how that murderer escaped justice in the court system.

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Crime-Action, Documentary

 

Who Needs Sleep? (2006)

13 Jun

75m; U.S.

Director: Haskell Wexler
Stars:  David Agus, Netta Bank and Annette Bening |

Documentary highlights the deadly combination of sleep deprivation and long days of work.

 

 

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Documentary, Entertainment Industry, Safety & Health

 

Why Cybraceros? (1997)

13 Jun

5m; U.S.

Director: Alex Rivera

Synopsis: Alex Rivera, Why Cybraceros? (5 min. 1997, USA) takes the form of a mock promotional film. It is based on a real promotional film produced in the late 1940’s by the California Grower’s Council, titled Why Braceros? This film was used by the Grower’s Council to defend the use ofbraceros, or temporary Mexican farmhands. I use footage from this old industrial to briefly lay out the history of the Bracero Program in the United States. At the half way point the piece takes a sharp turn as the narrator advocates a futuristic Bracero Program in which only the labor is imported to the United States. The workers themselves are left at home in Mexico, as they Tele-commute to American farms over the high-speed Internet. The narrator explains that in this imagined future there is no difference between rich and poor on the Internet, this is a future in which truly everyone can work from home, even braceros.

This dystopic concept, of a world in which immigrants can labor in America but never live in, or become the responsibility, of American society, is to me not only a bizarre twist on the American Dream; in some ways this is the realization of the American Dream. The United States has always benefited from the low wage (and sometimes free) labor of recent immigrants, who are drawn to America, in part, by The Dream of instant success. Simultaneously, nearly every wave of new immigrants suffers through several decades of intense discrimination, and usually a combination of verbal and physical attacks. TheCybracero, as a trouble free, no commitment, low cost laborer, is the perfect immigrant. The Cybracero is the hi-tech face of the age-old American Dream.

Contact: View here – http://blog.altoarizona.com/blog/2010/04/why-cybraceros-a-mock-promotional-film-by-alex-rivera.html

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Immigrants/Immigration, SciFi

 

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Why Unions Matter (2008)

13 Jun

Director: Laura Deutch

Synopsis: Addresses importance of the union to organize and educate workers, particularly immigrant workers, about their rights in the workplace.

Contact: laura.deutch@gmail.com

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Collective Bargaining, Documentary

 

The Wide Blue Road (1957)

13 Jun

103m; Italy

Director: Gillo Pontecorvo

Cast: Yves Montand, Alida Valli and Francisco Rabal

Synopsis (IMDB): Squarciò, a fisherman, lives with his family on a small island off the Dalmatian coast of Italy. Like his fellow villagers, Squarciò struggles against harsh living conditions, a scarcity of fish in nearby waters and exploitation by the local wholesaler. But while the other fishermen continue to use nets, he goes out to the open sea to fish illegally with bombs. But Squarciò borrows money, loses his boat, and in a moment of supreme desperation, has to bomb directly off-shore, causing the hatred and rejection of his fellow fishermen. Trying to save his family, Squarciò and his young sons sail their new boat out beyond the local waters and bomb-fish again. But this time, the sea exacts a terrible toll

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Drama

 

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Wild Boys of the Road (1933)

13 Jun

68m; U.S.

Director: William A. Wellman

Synopsis: Presents a picture of hobo towns of jobless youth springing up during the depression in the US

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

 
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