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Category Archives: Occupation/Type of Work

Industria Argentina (2011) (Argentine Industry)

03 Feb

INDUSTRIA ARGENTINA

Directed by: Ricardo Díaz Iacoponi
Country: Argentina.
Running Time: 96 minutes.
Starring: Aymará Rovera, Carlos Portaluppi, Cutuli.
http://www.indargentina-film.com.ar/indexar.html

Trailer: http://indargentina-film.com.ar/trailer.html

At Arlumar, a spare parts factory, workers resist to lose their only means of earning their living. Juan, as well as many other employees, has not collected his salaries for months. His pregnant wife and his debts make him foresee a very dark future ahead. Little by little, taking control of their desperation, Juan and his coworkers begin to organize themselves to keep running the company that has been abandoned by its owners. In that way, they assume the rebuilding of a company that has no employers, which proves to be a heavy burden to carry.

 
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Posted by on February 3, 2016 in Drama, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Manufacturing, Unemployment-Wages, Working Class

 

La Cola (The Line)

03 Feb

The Line is a drama from Argentina. Written and directed by Enrique La ColaLiporace and Ezequiel C. Inzaghi, starring renowned Argentine acting professionals such as Alejandro Awada, Lucrecia Oviedo, Ana María Picchio and Antonio Gasalla.

The Line focuses on the experiences of Félix Cayetano Gómez, who lives in the city of Buenos Aires and has to scramble daily to make ends meet. This man discovers a way to earn money by waiting in lines to run different errands or do paperwork for other people, in exchange of a sum of money.

But Félix is not the only one who works as a “line man”, there are many others doing the same job and all of them dream about forming an employee’s union that can group and protect them.

At some point in the story, those other workers reveal to Félix a criminal plan that would allow him to collect much more money: it is related to waiting in lines to do education, health and work related paperwork. As a consequence of his job, the main character will become a witness and an accomplice of a tragic but comical reality that will also affect his own life.

Original Title: La cola.
Starring: Alejandro Awada, Lucrecia Oviedo, Antonio Gasalla, Ana María Piccio.
Genre: Drama.
Directed by: Enrique Liporace, Ezequiel C. Inzaghi.
Country of Origin: Argentina.
Running Time: 99 minutes.
Rated: PG-13
Released in Buenos Aires: September 13th, 2012.
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-_73RuRg_w

 

 
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Posted by on February 3, 2016 in Crime-Action, Drama, Self-Employed/Freelance

 

Evelyn Williams

06 Dec

Directed by Anne Lewis, USA, Appalshop,1995 (28 minutes)
https://store.appalshop.org/shop/appalshop-films/evelyn-williams/

Evelyn Williams is a portrait of a woman who is many things: a coal miner’s daughter and wife; a domestic worker and mother of nine; a college student in her 50s and community organizer; an Appalachian African American. Above all, she is a woman whose awareness of class and race oppression has led her to a lifetime of activism. Now in her 80s, she is battling to save her land in eastern Kentucky from destruction by a large oil and gas firm.
With humor, eloquence, and at times anger, Evelyn tells her story. Her family came to eastern Kentucky in 1922 when she was six years old. She remembers the Klan burning a cross on the mountain and describes the sense of powerlessness that followed a lynching for which the murderers were never arrested. She married a coal miner and later moved to West Virginia where her daughters were able to attend college.While her husband worked in the mines and helped organize the union, she cleaned the homes of coal company bosses. When the mines mechanized and laid off workers, the family moved to Brooklyn, N.Y. where Evelyn studied at the New School for Social Research and became active in efforts to improve her community. Her commitment to fight for justice and equality was deepened when her son was killed in Vietnam and the U.S. military misinformed and mistreated the family. Following retirement in the early 70′s, Evelyn and her husband returned to a piece of family land in Kentucky. Most recently, she has been a leader of a grassroots effort by Kentuckians for the Commonwealth to end oil and gas company use of the broadform deed to drill on surface owners’ land without their permission. In explaining her determination to preserve her land, she recalls her grandfather, an ex-slave, who said, “Take care of the land. Take care of the land. As long as you have land, you have a belonging.” The program portrays a fascinating and dynamic personality whose keen sense of communal and family history influences her determination. Through her story, Evelyn makes important connections between civil rights, women’s rights, and environmental concerns.

 
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Posted by on December 6, 2015 in Class, Documentary, Environment, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Women, Working Class

 

Deep Down: a story from the heart of coal country

06 Dec

Directed by Jen Gilomen and Sally Rubin, USA, Fine Line Films,
2010 (57 minutes) website

Beverly May and Terry Ratliff grew up like kin on opposite sides of a mountain ridge in eastern Kentucky. Now in their fifties, the two find themselves in the midst of a debate dividing their community and the world: who controls, consumes, and benefits from our planet’s shrinking supply of natural resources?
While Beverly organizes her neighbors and leads a legal fight to stop Miller Brothers Coal Company from advancing into her hollow, Terry considers signing away the mining rights to his backyard—a decision that could destroy not only the two friends’ homes, but the peace and environment surrounding their community. The two friends soon find themselves caught in the middle of a contentious battle over energy and the wealth and environmental destruction it represents.

 

 
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Posted by on December 6, 2015 in Documentary, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Safety & Health, Women

 

Resistencia: The Fight for the Aguan Valley

06 Dec

Director: Jesse Freeston
Writers: Diego Briceño-Orduz (story), Jesse Freeston
me@jessefreeston.com
http://resistenciathefilm.com/

In 2009, the first coup d’etat in a generation in Central America overthrows the elected president of Honduras. A nation-wide movement, known simply as The Resistance, rises in opposition. Resistencia: The Fight for the Aguan Valley centers on the most daring wing of the movement, the farmers of the Aguan. Not satisfied with just marching and blocking highways, 2000 landless families take possession of the palm oil plantations of Miguel Facusse, the country’s largest landowner and a key player in the coup. The camera follows three farmers over four years as they build their new communities on occupied land, in the face of the regime’s violent response, while waiting for the elections The Resistance hopes will restore the national democratic project.

 
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Posted by on December 6, 2015 in Class, Documentary, Farm & Food, Organizing, Politics, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

Gaucho del Norte (2015)

06 Dec

54 min | Documentary, Adventure, Western
Directors: Andres Caballero, Sofian Khan

In the quiet, bucolic Patagonian countryside in the town of Bahia Murta with 587 inhabitants we meet Eraldo Pacheco, a thoughtful man who has recently arrived at a momentous decision. “Things are worse here than ever,” Eraldo tells his father and family as he announces his plan to move to the United States to fulfill a three-year contract tending sheep almost 6,000 miles away in rural Idaho. In this observational documentary of impressive beauty and painterly cinematic images the imbalance of economic forces is seen in high relief.
With poetic subtlety the film speaks to the economic fragility of these remote and rural communities in South America as well as the precarious and fickle agricultural economy up north. Once in Salt Lake City, Utah, we meet Jhonny Qispe, from Peru, who also made the trek up north and who also left a wife and two children behind.
Peaceful, meditative scenes envelop the viewer – vast desert, steep mountains, winter’s terrain and thousands of sheep belie the angst of the economic woes that cause a separation between a man and his beloved, his elders, his children, and the spiritual majesty of his homeland. Jhonny is also deeply invested in being a provider for his family. But what might seem like a pastoral, nomadic life is a lonely and tough existence.
While Eraldo is up north, he continues to fret about not being in Chile tending to his family, especially his elderly parents. Did he make the right choice?

 
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Posted by on December 6, 2015 in Documentary, Immigrants/Immigration, Migrant workers, Self-Employed/Freelance, Temp/Precarious work

 

Buzzard (2014)

06 Dec

97 min | Comedy, Drama | 6 March 2015 (USA)
Director/writer: Joel Potrykus
Stars: Joshua Burge, Joel Potrykus, Teri Ann Nelson

Marty is a caustic, small-time con artist drifting from one scam to the next. When his latest ruse goes awry, mounting paranoia forces him from his lousy small town temp job to the desolate streets of Detroit with nothing more than a pocket full of bogus checks, a dangerously altered Nintendo® Power Glove, and a bad temper. Albert Camus meets Freddy Krueger in BUZZARD, a hellish and hilarious riff on the struggles of the American working class.

NYTimes: Review: In ‘Buzzard,’ an Angry, Unkempt Antihero
An unsparing portrait of an office temp and scam artist near the bottom of the economic food chain.
NYTimes: Joel Potrykus’s Film ‘Buzzard’ Is Inspired by Dead-End Jobs
The writer and director’s deadpan comedies have followed a man-child on the skids.

 
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Posted by on December 6, 2015 in Comedy, Consumerism, Drama, Self-Employed/Freelance, Technology, Temp/Precarious work, Working Class

 

Gold Fever (2013)

06 Dec

J.T. Haines, Tommy Haines & Andrew Sherburne, co-directors
84 min | Documentary, Drama | 13 April 2013 (USA)
http://www.goldfevermovie.com/
productions@northlandfilms.com

Gold, an obsession of men and nations; a symbol of wealth and power. But for Diodora, Gregoria, Crisanta and the people living near the Marlin Mine in Guatemala’s highlands, gold represents oppression, intimidation, pollution and even murder. With the rising price of gold, the mine’s owner, Goldcorp, posts record profits, while these courageous women live in resistance to the mine’s unstoppable hunger.

 
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Posted by on December 6, 2015 in Documentary, Environment, Global Economy, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Safety & Health

 

Champ of the Camp (2013)

06 Dec

Director: Mahmoud Kaabour
75 min | Documentary, Music |
With unprecedented access, this creative documentary paints a complete portrait of life in Dubai’s labor camps, told entirely in the voices of the laborers as we follow their participation in a huge Bollywood singing competition
http://www.champofthecampmovie.com/

 
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Posted by on December 6, 2015 in Cities-Urban, Discrimination: Racism, Sexism, etc, Documentary, Immigrants/Immigration, Migrant workers

 

Streit’s: Matzo and the American Dream (2015)

06 Dec

http://matzofilm.com/
65 min  |  Documentary, Family, History  |  12 April 2015 (USA)
Director/writer: Michael Levine

On Manhattan’s Lower East Side, in a series of four nondescript brick tenement buildings, sits the Streit’s Matzo factory. In 1925, when Aron Streit opened the factory’s doors, it sat at the heart of the nations largest Jewish immigrant community. Today, in its fifth generation of family ownership, in a rapidly gentrifying Lower East Side, it remains as the last family owned matzo factory in America.
(note: the factory closed in April 2015; workers will have to commute to New Jersey)

 
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Posted by on December 6, 2015 in Automation, Cities-Urban, Documentary, Farm & Food, Immigrants/Immigration, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing

 
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