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Category Archives: Genre

La Raison du Plus Faible (2006)

26 Apr

116m; France

Director: Lucas Belvaux

Cast: Eric Caravaca, Lucas Belvaux and Claude Semal

Synopsis: Laid-off French steelworkers turn to crime. Explores frustrations of men who find themselves no longer useful members of society but takes a fatal turn into a robbery/thriller and deteriorates into pointless violence.

Contact:  almost forgot to mention one film (an excellent fit!!): LA RAISON DU PLUS FAIBLE, by Lucas Belvaux. It is distributed in the US, but there’s no print for now, but there should be one for the fall. You can contact Wendy Lidell on my behalf if you don’t know her at International Film Circuit: 212.777.5690 or wlidell@infc.us. If she doesn’t have a print by then, I might be able to get one from France. – I almost forgot to mention one film (an excellent fit!!): LA RAISON DU PLUS FAIBLE, by Lucas Belvaux. It is distributed in the US, but there’s no print for now, but there should be one for the fall. You can contact Wendy Lidell on my behalf if you don’t know her at International Film Circuit: 212.777.5690 or wlidell@infc.us. If she doesn’t have a print by then, I might be able to get one from France.

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Crime-Action, Drama, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Unemployment-Wages

 

Ralph Fasanella: Song of the City (1979)

26 Apr

30m; U.S.

Director: Jack Ofield

Synopsis: Biography of a working class electrical plant worker/painter/CIO organizer.

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Arts/Culture, Biography, Documentary, Labor History, Organizing

 

Ramparts of Clay (1971)

26 Apr

80m; France

Director: Jean-Louis Bertuccelli

Cast: Leila Shenna, Kricheche and Jean-Louis Trintignant

Synopsis (IMDB): In 1962, change comes to a Tunisian village on the edge of the Sahara. An entrepreneur sets up a salt mine, hiring village men. When he pays only half the wages agreed upon, they sit down in a field of rocks. The boss calls the army, who encircle the strikers. The women watch, sacrifice a sheep, pray, ululate. During the second night, a young woman hides the bucket and rope of the town’s well to keep water from the army. The strike galvanizes her: she’s learning to read and has studied a city woman who visits the village. Now, as she removes her traditional dress and rejects a ritual to cast out her new rebellious spirit, will she gain independence as did Tunisia and the strikers

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Drama, Organizing, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts, Women

 

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Rapt (2009)

26 Apr

125m; France

Director: Lucas Belvaux

Cast: Yvan Attal, Anne Consigny and André Marcon

Synopsis: Stanislaff Graff, a rich industrialist and jetsetting playboy with a wife and a lover, is snatched by kidnappers who demand a fifty million euro ransom. The main question for his board is whether his life is worth more than twenty million. Based on a true story. Told entirely from the industrialist’s point of view, there’s really nothing here about work or workers, and even the question about what a life is worth is not explored much or well. While it’s barely hinted that the kidnappers may be disgruntled workers, this too is left unexplored.

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Crime-Action, Drama, White Collar

 

Ratcatcher (1999)

26 Apr

94m; U.K.

Director: Lynne Ramsay

Cast: Tommy Flanagan, Mandy Matthews and William Eadie

Synopsis (IMDB): Glasgow, summer, 1973. Dustmen are striking; bags of garbage add to the blight of council flats and a fetid canal. Ryan, who’s about 12, drowns during a play fight with his neighbor, the jug-eared James. James runs home, a flat where he lives with his often-drunk da, his ma, and sisters, who live in hope of moving to newly-built council flats. The slice-of-life, coming-of-age story follows James as he tags along with the older lads; has a friendship with his quirky wee rodent-loving neighbor, Kenny; spends time with Margaret Anne, myopic, slightly older, the local sexual punching bag; and, has a moment or two of joy. The strike may end, but is there any way out for James?

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Children, Drama, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

Raven’s End (1963)

26 Apr

101m; Sweden

Director: Bo Widerberg

Cast: Thommy Berggren, Keve Hjelm and Emy Storm

Synopsis: Portrait of working class youth. Portrays family life in Malmo, Sweden in 1930s, tracing relations between an adolescent boy and his father.

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Children, Drama, Working Class

 

The Real Price Of Military Occupation

26 Apr

20m; U.S.

Director: U.S. Labor Against the War

Synopsis: The vast majority of union members are now solidly against the war, yet most do not know the full impact the wars and occupations, and more broadly the military budget, are having on our troops, social services, national security, the federal budget and national debt, as well as on Iraqis and Iraq.

Contact: US Labor Against The War (USLAW) info@uslaboragainstwar.org http://www.uslaboragainstwar.org

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Documentary, Global Economy, Politics, War

 

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Rebellion in Patagonia (1974)

26 Apr

110m; Argentina

Director: Héctor Olivera

Cast: Pedro Aleandro, Héctor Alterio and Luis Brandoni

Synopsis (New York Times): “Rebellion in Patagonia” covers a great deal of ground in the sweeping style of the muralist, opening with the assassination of an Army colonel in Buenos Aires in 1923 and then going back several years to describe the events leading up to that assassination.

Most of the action takes place on the broad plains of Patagonia, one of the most beautiful, most spooky landscapes on earth. It was there that a coalition of Communists and anarchists had successfully organized the workers on the sheep farms. When the landowners later refuse to honor their agreements, new strikes break out and the Army chief, once sympathetic to populist cause, sets out to break the movement in a campaign that’s estimated to have taken the lives of 3,000 workers.

The film is a collection of vignettes, richly detailed with the sort of character and incident that recall nostalgically but without sentimentality the sense of high purpose of early trade-unionism. The movie has a great fondness for these seminal labor fighters, including a young Spanish activist (Luis Brandoni) who is also a realist, and a fine old German idealist (Pepe Soriano) who puts his life on the line for his beliefs.

It’s not all black versus white, though. Mr. Olivera defines divisions within the ranks of both sides, sometimes tragically and often wittily, as in an early trade-union meeting when the success of a strike is celebrated by the Communists with a rousing anthem while their nonpoliticized Chilean compatriots look on aghast. They haven’t yet been taught that politics can be expressed in song.

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Collective Bargaining, Drama, Labor History, Organizing, Politics, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

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Rebuilding San Francisco (2006)

26 Apr

28m; U.S.

Director: Maria Brooks

Synopsis: Workers who rebuilt San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake.

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Construction Trades, Documentary, Working Class

 

Red Dust (2010)

26 Apr

20m; U.S.

Director: Karin T. Mak

Synopsis: The incredible story of resistance, courage and hope by women workers in China battling cadmium poisoning and demanding justice from the local government and their employer, a multi-national battery manufacturer.

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Documentary, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Safety & Health, Women

 
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