105m; Italy
Director: Giuseppe de Santis
Cast: Carla Del Poggio, Lucia Bosé, Raf Vallone
Synopsis (Wikipedia): The film is based on a real story, an accident that happened in Rome, when a staircase fell down because of the weight of hundreds of women waiting for a job interview as a secretary
Director: Vittorio De Sica
Italy; 91m
Natale, an apprentice bricklayer, and Luisa, who has no skill, marry and try to live with Natale’s parents and other relatives in one apartment, what might happen in the poorest classes in Rome about 1950. After a quarrel Natale and Luisa precipitately leave without a place to live. The remainder of the film is devoted to their finding housing. The solution is building a one room brick dwelling as a squat on unused railway land on the outskirts of Rome. As this is illegal Natale gets his workmates to assist him during the night. Provided a dwelling has a door and a roof the householder cannot be evicted. At dawn when the police arrive to remove them the dwelling is complete except for part of the roof, but a humane policeman looks the other way. We suppose that Natale and Luisa, now pregnant, live happily ever after. (Wikipedia)
57m; U.S.
Director: Steve Fetsch
Synopsis: Prehistoric tools, Ben Franklin, trust busting, railroads, drug laws, plastics, nanotubes and space travel? What ties these things together in a movie? Rope, of course!
Contact: athensmovie@yahoo.com 740-594-7848 (Private)
97m; U.S.
Director: Julie Dash
Cast: Angela Bassett, Peter Francis James and Tonea Stewart
Synopsis: Film biography of civil rights heroine Rosa Parks.
92m; Belguim
Director: Jean-Pierre Dardenne and Luc Dardenne
Cast: Émilie Dequenne, Fabrizio Rongione and Anne Yernaux
Synopsis: Young and impulsive Rosetta lives with her alcoholic mother and, moved by despair, she will do anything to maintain a job. Set in Belgium. Both film and actress won major prizes in Cannes.
25m; U.S.
Director: Roger Weisberg
Synopsis (IMDB): A Liberian refugee’s inspiring journey to build a new life for his family.
10m; U.S.
Director: Dennis Strom; Clyde Ware
Cast: Jesse Johnson, Tyrone Power Jr, Joe Estevez
Synopsis: A video presentation about a coal miner working to get medical care for his wife. The miner is eventually trapped in a coalmine disaster and barely escapes with his life. Tyrone Power Jr, grandson of the famous Tyrone Power, and Joe Estevez, the brother of Martin Sheen appear in the presentation.
Contact: Steve Fesenmaier has a VHS copy he was given by Clyde Ware who still works out of Delaware Pictures, 650 N. Bronson Ave., B114, Hollywood, CA 90004 (323) 960-4552 delaware_pix@yahoo.com
28m; U.S.
Synopsis: Looks at the consequences of automation in the coal mining industry in eastern Kentucky: severely reduced wages, chronic unemployment, families divided by out-migration and in 1961 and 62, the cancellation of union health insurance benefits the threatened closing of the UMWA hospitals. All this stimulated President Johnson’s interest in creating the “War on Poverty.”
57m; U.S.
Director: John de Graaf
Synopsis (IMDB): The growing problems of “time famine” and overwork.
by Lester Balog. This historic footage shows the 1941 San Francisco Labor Day march and the 1941 hotel workers’ strike. Screened (with “SF Labor on the March”) at the 2003 San Francisco LaborFest.
THE LABOR FILM DATABASE 