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.
86m
Shattering the Silences: The Case for Minority Faculty offers everyone in higher education an unprecedented opportunity to see American campuses through the eyes of minority faculty.
Across America campus diversity is under attack; affirmative action programs are banned, ethnic studies departments defunded, multicultural scholarship impugned. Even so, faculty of color remain less than 9.2% of all full professors and minority student enrollment is dropping for the first time in 30 years.
Shattering the Silences cuts through the rhetoric of the current Culture Wars by telling the stories of eight pioneering scholars – African American, Latino, Native American and Asian American. As we watch them teach, mentor and conduct research, we realize in concrete terms how a diverse faculty enriches and expands traditional disciplines and contributes to a more inclusive campus environment.
available from California NewsReel
58m; U.S.
Director: Tony Buba, Raymond Henderson
Cast: Raymond Henderson, Dennis C. Dickerson and Katrina Heiss
Synopsis (IMDB): This documentary tells the forgotten story of the African-American struggle for equality in the U.S. steel industry (based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania). In a series of interviews intermixed with archival footage and stills, we learn how these workers faced and overcame discrimination that came from white workers, the big steel companies, and even from their own unions.
91m; U.S.
Director: David and Albert Maysles
Synopsis: This landmark documentary follows four Boston bible salesmen as they struggle to make a living in the cutthroat world of door-to-door sales. The film follows the salesmen as they wheedle, connive and cajole their way into homes and wallets. As the pressure of the job bears down, the film reveals the dark underside of the American Dream.
THE LABOR FILM DATABASE 