Genre | THE LABOR FILM DATABASE

Standing Tall, Women Unionize the Catfish Industry (2001)

Run Time: 50min.

Produced, written and directed by Donald Blank

The boom in Mississippi catfish farming, in the 1980’s, required processing plants and hundreds of workers. The mostly black female workforce had to work, in noisy and wet factories for minimum wage, without any benefits, bathroom breaks or recourse if a worker was mistreated. The Mississippi Delta, at the time, was notoriously poor, neglected, and resistant to change.This historical documentary chronicles the risky and difficult effort of a few women working at Delta Pride Catfish to organize a United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) local 1529 at their plant. The 1986 union election victory surprised many locals, especially management at Delta Pride. In 1990, the workers at Delta Pride struck for two months and won better wages and working conditions. The strike established local 1529 as an important player in the catfish industry, with a membership today of 3,000 workers.

Rose Turner, Mary Young and Sarah White, who initiated and led local 1529, tell the story with passion and humor.

available from Filmakers Library

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Posted by Metro Council on May 7, 2012 in Blacks, Collective Bargaining, Documentary

Tags: Food Service Industry

Standing on My Sisters’ Shoulders (2002)

07 May

61m; U.S.

Director: Laura J. Lipson

Synopsis (official website): The award-winning documentary “Standing On My Sisters’ Shoulders” takes on the Civil Rights movement in Mississippi in the 1950’s and 60’s from the point of view of the courageous women who lived it – and emerged as its grassroots leaders. These women stood up and fought for the right to vote and the right to an equal education. They not only brought about change in Mississippi, but they altered the course of American history.

This documentary presents original interviews with many of the Civil Rights movement’s most remarkable women: Unita Blackwell, a sharecropper turned activist, who became Mississippi’s first female black mayor; Mae Bertha Carter, a mother of 13, whose children became the first to integrate the Drew County schools against dangerous opposition; white student activist Joan Trumpauer Mulholland who not only participated in sit-ins but took a stand on integration by attending an all black university; Annie Devine and Victoria Gray Adams, who, along with Fannie Lou Hamer, stepped up and challenged the Democratic Party and President Johnson at the 1964 Convention.

Contact: http://www.sisters-shoulders.org/film.html

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Posted by Metro Council on May 7, 2012 in Blacks, Documentary, Organizing, Women

Stanley and Iris (1989)

07 May

104m; U.S.

Director: Martin Ritt

Cast: Jane Fonda, Robert De Niro and Swoosie Kurtz

Synopsis (IMDB): An illiterate cook at a company cafeteria tries for the attention of a newly widowed woman. As they get to know one another, she discovers his inability to read. When he is fired, she takes on trying to teach him to read in her kitchen each night.

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Posted by Metro Council on May 7, 2012 in Drama, Romance, Unemployment-Wages, Working Class

Tags: Food Service Industry

Starkiss: Circus Girls in India (2003)

07 May

77m; Netherlands/India

Director: Jascha de Wilde, Chris Relleke

Synopsis (IMDB): This documentary provides an interesting look at the life of young girls (as young as 7)who are basically sold to the circus as performers. Some parent’s, having received advances on their daughter’s contracts, abandon them for years. Others, pay occasional visits to their daughters, often coming for another advance. The girls are basically jailed, unable to communicate with anyone other than their trainers and guard. A well done documentary providing some really poignant shots and candid interviews.

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Posted by Metro Council on May 7, 2012 in Children, Documentary, Entertainment Industry

Startup.com (2001)

07 May

107m; U.S.

Director: Chris Hegedus, Jehane Noujaim

Cast: Kaleil Isaza Tuzman, Tom Herman and Kenneth Austin

Synopsis (IMDB): Kaleil Isaza Tuzman and Tom Herman have had a dream since they became friends at age fifteen: get rich by developing their own dot com company, in some aspect of computer technology interface. Now in their late twenties, they have now come up with the idea they believe will make their riches, namely as Tom refers to it, “parking tickets”: the company will be the on-line revenue collection interface for municipal governments. GovWorks.com came into existence in May 1999 with only an idea. The process of building the business focuses on obtaining venture capital based solely on the idea, with the actual mechanics of the website seemingly almost an afterthought, or at least one left primarily to the hired help. Regardless of the strength of the idea itself in raising this capital, another initial problem they face is what they see as non-commitment by a third partner, Kaleil’s friend Chieh Cheung.

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Posted by Metro Council on May 7, 2012 in Documentary, Technology, White Collar

Steel (1979)

07 May

102m; U.S.

Director: Steve Carver

Cast: Lee Majors, Jennifer O’Neill and Art Carney

Synopsis (IMDB): Mike Catton was once a world-renowned construction foreman (at least in the construction world), but an accident left him with a serious fear of heights. Unable to climb the big skyscrapers while under construction, he retired and became a truck driver. But when an old friend needs him to help put up a building, and when the old friend gets harassed and threatened by an Evil Corporate Type, he comes out of retirement and assembles the creme de la creme of the construction world. Together, they race against time to finish the building while the Evil Corporate Type tries to stop them.

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Posted by Metro Council on May 7, 2012 in Construction Trades, Crime-Action, Working Class

Steel City (2006)

07 May

95m; U.S.

Director: Brian Jun

Cast: Jamie Anne Allman, Raymond J. Barry and Kristian Best

Synopsis (IMDB): Steel City is a stirring family drama from the heartland of America about pride, remorse and forgiveness. When Carl Lee is involved in a fatal car accident he finds himself behind bars, cut off from his life and alienated by his family. His youngest son PJ, confused by life without his dad, is the only person to visit him. While PJ’s girlfriend stays lovingly by his side and his Uncle Vic extends a helping hand, a belligerent older brother and the reality of being on his own force PJ to grow up faster than he’d like. It’s not until a devastating secret is revealed that the family reunites and a regretful father learns that you can never take back the past, but you can let go of it.

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Posted by Metro Council on May 7, 2012 in Children, Drama, Working Class

The Stars Look Down (1940)

07 May

110m; U.K.

Director: Carol Reed

Cast: Michael Redgrave, Margaret Lockwood and Edward Rigby

Synopsis (IMDB): Davey Fenwick leaves his mining village on a university scholarship intent on returning to better support the miners against the owners. But he falls in love with Jenny who gets him to marry her and return home as local schoolteacher before finishing his degree. Davey finds he is ill-at-ease in his role, the more so when he realises Jenny still loves her former boyfriend. When he finds that his father and the other miners are going to have to continue working on a possibly deadly coal seam he decides to act.

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Posted by Metro Council on May 7, 2012 in Drama, Education, Romance, Working Class

Tags: Mining