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Category Archives: Genre

Sangre (2005)

26 Apr

90m; Mexico

Director: Amat Escalante

Cast: Cirilo Recio Dávila, Claudia Orozco and Martha Preciado

Synopsis (IMDB): Diego’s job is counting people as they enter a large government building. After work, he and his wife Blanca lie on the couch, watch soap operas, or make love on the kitchen table. Their relationship is based on having sex, watching TV, and fighting, until one day their routine is interrupted. Karina, Diego’s daughter from a previous marriage, arrives in search of her father’s love, but Blanca refuses to accept her. Diego finds himself caught between an extremely jealous wife and a daughter in desperate need of guidance. An astonishing climax will lead Diego to a total loss of control.

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Crime-Action, Working Class

 

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960)

26 Apr

89m; U.K.

Director: Karel Reisz

Cast:  Albert Finney, Shirley Anne Field and Rachel Roberts

Synopsis (IMDB): Arthur, one of Britain’s angry young men of the 1960s, is a hardworking factory worker who slaves all week at his mindless job for his modest wages. Come Saturday night, he’s off to the pub for a loud and rowdy beer session. With him is Brenda, his girlfriend of the moment. Married to a fellow worker, she is nonetheless captivated by his rugged good looks and his devil-may-care attitude. Soon a new love interest Doreen enters and a week later, Brenda announces she’s pregnant. She tells Arthur she needs money for an abortion, and Arthur promises to pay for it. By this time, his relationship with Doreen has ripened and Brenda, hearing of it, confronts him. He denies everything, but it’s obvious that their affair is all but over.

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Drama, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Romance, Working Class

 

Saturday’s Children (1940)

26 Apr

102m; U.S.

Director: Vincent Sherman

Cast: John Garfield, Anne Shirley and Claude Rains

Synopsis (IMDB): Pretty Bobby Halevy loves Rims Rosson, a dreamer and inventor without much going for him. Rims has a scheme of going to Manila to turn hemp into silk and become rich. But when one of her family talks Bobby into tricking Rims into marriage, the real world comes crashing down on the couple

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Drama, Unemployment-Wages, Working Class

 

The Scar (1976)

26 Apr

112m; Poland

Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski

Cast: Franciszek Pieczka, Mariusz Dmochowski and Jerzy Stuhr

Synopsis (IMDB): 1970. After discussions and dishonest negotiations, a decision is taken as to where a large new chemical factory is to be built and Bednarz, an honest Party man, is put in charge of the construction. He used to live in the small town where the factory is to be built, his wife used to be a Party activist there, and he has unpleasant memories of it. But he sets to the task in the belief that he will build a place where people will live and work well. His intentions and convictions, however, conflict with those of the townspeople who are primarily concerned with their short-term needs. Disillusioned, Bednarz gives up his post.

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Drama, Environment, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing

 

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The Scavengers (2007)

26 Apr

69m; Turkey

Director: Karahber

Synopsis: Kurdish migrants collect paper to sell for recycling to survive.

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Drama, Migrant workers

 

Schmatta: Rags to Riches to Rags (2009)

26 Apr

75m; U.S.

Director: Marc Levin

Synopsis: Schmatta documents the current post-crash economy. We hear from freshly unemployed workers who put on a brave face, preserve their humour and try to make sense of the changing landscape. The shops stemming off Seventh Avenue that once hummed with sewing machines are being converted for upscale renters. If this gargantuan industry can be reduced to such a fraction, what does it mean for the rest of us?

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Documentary, Unemployment-Wages

 

Land of Destiny (2010)

20 Apr

78m; U.S.

Director: Brett Story

Synopsis: A hard-working petrochemical town is rocked by revelations that its workers suffer an epidemic of cancers. But even more terrifying is the looming spectre of deindustrialization and joblessness. In the rich fabric of the city’s landscape – rows of boarded storefronts, the bright sprawl of petrochemical plants and the swollen rooms of hospital wards and crowded bars – one finds a microcosm of the 21st century. Tattooed men serving fries, basement musicians, boilermakers and volunteer firemen, heartbroken widows and an optimistic mayor – the lives of a diverse medley of characters intersect to reveal the dramas and contradictions of an industrial town out of sync with a post-industrial world. As the dystopian architecture of the petrochemical plants, squatted like crushed space stations just meters away from homes and schoolyards, give way to the spaces that make this city a community, we begin to see what it is that everyone seems so afraid to lose. A portrait of a working-class city in paralysis and a mediation on work and place in the modern economy, Land of Destiny offers a poignant and universal story about work, community, and struggle in an era of globalization.

Contact: http://www.bunburyfilms.com/films/trailer/doc/lod.html

 
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Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Documentary, Global Economy, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Unemployment-Wages, Working Class

 

Land, Rain, and Fire (2006)

20 Apr

28m; Mexico

Director: Tami Gold

What began as a teacher’s strike in May of 2006 against privatization and for better wages and more resources for students, erupted into a massive movement for profound social change in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico. Government repression brought even greater popular resistance, which ultimately brought the state government to a standstill.

 
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Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Documentary, Education, Organizing, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

The Last Campaign (2005)

20 Apr

107m; U.S.

Director: Wayne Ewing

Synopsis: “The Last Campaign” – a sequel to Ewing’s legendary first film in 1972, “If Elected…” – covers the 2004 campaign of Justice Warren McGraw for the re-election to the West Virginia Supreme Court, dubbed the ‘nastiest’ judicial race, if not the most expensive in the nation. Scenes from “If Elected…” -which covered Warren McGraw’s 1972 race for the West Virginia State Senate and was originally broadcast by Bill Moyers in 1973 – are interspersed with the story of McGraw’s 2004 Supreme Court race to create a unique, cinema verite portrait of American politics over a 32 year span. One man’s struggle to resist corporate interference in the electoral process is the continuing theme. In 2004, the US Chamber of Commerce is suspected, of funneling millions of dollars from multi-national corporations into West Virginia in the primary and general election in a successful effort to defeat Justice Warren McGraw as a part of what Forbes Magazine described as a “secret war” against judges in America. The Chamber’s shadowy efforts were joined in the general election by a group calling itself “For the Sake of the Kids” which spent millions, supplied from a coal company executive to wage a smear campaign against McGraw alleging that he let a sexual predator loose to work in a school. That same coal company executive has a pending 50 million dollar judgment against his company on appeal before the West Virginia State Supreme Court.

Contact: http://www.thelastcampaign.com/

 
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Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Documentary, Legal System, Politics

 

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Last Exit to Brooklyn (1989)

20 Apr

102m; U.S.

Director: Uli Edel

Cast: Jennifer Jason Leigh, Stephen Lang and Burt Young

Synopsis (IMDB): Taken from Hubert Selby, Jr.’s controversial novel. A gallery of characters in Brooklyn in the 1950s are crushed by their surroundings and selves: a union strike leader discovers he is gay; a prostitute falls in love with one of her clients; a family cannot cope with the fact that their daughter is illegitimately pregnant.

 
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Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Drama, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts, Working Class

 
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