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Category Archives: Occupation/Type of Work

99 Homes (2014)

06 Dec

Director: Ramin Bahrani
Writers: Ramin Bahrani (story), Ramin Bahrani, 2 more credits »
Stars: Andrew Garfield, Michael Shannon, Laura Dern
R  |  112 min  |  Drama

In this timely thriller, charismatic and ruthless businessman, Rick Carver (Academy nominee Michael Shannon), is making a killing by repossessing homes – gaming the real estate market, Wall Street banks and the US government. When he evicts Dennis Nash (Golden Globe nominee Andrew Garfield), a single father trying to care for his mother (Academy Award nominee Laura Dern) and young son (newcomer Noah Lomax), Nash becomes so desperate to provide for his family that he goes to work for Carver – the very man who evicted him in the first place. Carver promises Nash a way to regain his home and earn security for his family, but slyly seduces him into a lifestyle of wealth and glamour. It is a deal-with-the-devil that comes with an increasingly high cost – on Carver’s orders, Nash must evict families from their homes. As Nash falls deeper into Carver’s web, he finds his situation grows more brutal and dangerous than he ever imagined.

 
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Posted by on December 6, 2015 in Drama, Housing

 

COTTON ROAD (2014)

11 Nov


Directed by Laura Kissell
72 min  |  Documentary, News  |  5 April 2014 (USA)
AMERICANS CONSUME NEARLY 20 BILLION NEW ITEMS OF CLOTHING EACH YEAR. YET FEW OF US KNOW HOW OUR CLOTHES ARE MADE, MUCH LESS WHO PRODUCES THEM. COTTON ROAD FOLLOWS THE COMMODITY OF COTTON FROM SOUTH CAROLINA FARMS TO CHINESE FACTORIES TO ILLUMINATE THE WORK AND INDUSTRIAL PROCESSES IN A GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAIN.

What does a rural town in South Carolina have to do with China? Americans consume nearly twenty billion new items of clothing each year, and at least one billion of them are made in China. Cotton Road uncovers the transnational movement of cotton and tells the stories of worker’s lives in a conventional cotton supply chain. From rural farms in South Carolina to factory cities in China, we span the globe to encounter the industrial processes behind our rapacious consumption of cheap clothing and textile products. Are we connected to one another through the things we consume? Cotton Road explores a contemporary landscape of globalized labor through human stories and provides an opportunity to reflect on the ways our consumption impacts others and drives a global economy.

 
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Posted by on November 11, 2015 in Automation, Documentary, Global Economy, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Manufacturing, Textile Industry

 

Cast in India (2014)

11 Nov

26 min, USA/India, 2014
Dir. Natasha Raheja

Iconic and ubiquitous, thousands of manhole covers dot the streets of New York City. Enlivening the everyday objects around us, this short film is a glimpse of the working lives of the men behind the manhole covers in New York City.

https://vimeo.com/95178509

Natasha Suresh Raheja nraheja@nyu.edu

 
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Posted by on November 11, 2015 in Construction Trades, Documentary, Global Economy, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Manufacturing, Safety & Health, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

Sauerbruch Hutton Architekten (2013)

11 Nov

by Harun Farocki. It is about life in an architecture studio directed by two people and follows the evolution of several projects at different levels of preparation.

 
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Posted by on November 11, 2015 in Construction Trades, Documentary

 

Lessons from a University on the Fly (Leçons d’une université volante) (1982)

11 Nov

Belgium
dir. Jean- Pierre and Luc Dardenne

in French with English subtitles

Filmed for television in 1982, this series of intimate portraits of Polish immigrants living in Belgium marks the beginning of the Dardennes’ interest in the lives of immigrants.

 

 
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Posted by on November 11, 2015 in Documentary, Immigrants/Immigration, Migrant workers

 

For The War To End The Walls Should Have Crumbled (Pour que la guerre s’achève, les murs devaient s’écrouler)

11 Nov

1980
52 min
dir. Jean- Pierre and Luc Dardenne

Looking back to the momentous events of Belgium’s general strike in 1960, the film focuses on the efforts of Edmond G. and colleagues at the Cockerill steel plant in Seraing to organise and secretly publish a workers’ newspaper between 1961 and 1969.

 
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Posted by on November 11, 2015 in Documentary, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Organizing, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

Sunder Nagri (Beautiful City) (2003)

11 Nov

Director: Rahul Roy
English (subtitled), 78 min, 2003, India
http://magiclanternmovies.in/film/city-beautiful

Sunder Nagri (Beautiful City) is a small working class colony on the margins of India’s capital city, Delhi. Most families residing here come from a community of weavers. The last ten years have seen a gradual disintegration of the handloom tradition of this community under the globalisation regime. The families have to cope with change as well as reinvent themselves to eke out a living.

Radha and Bal Krishan are at a critical point in their relationship. Bal Krishan is underemployed and constantly cheated. They are in disagreement about Radha going out to work. However, through all their ups and downs they retain the ability to laugh.Shakuntla and Hira Lal hardly communicate. They live under one roof with their children but are locked in their own sense of personal tragedies.

Producer: Rahul Roy
Creative Crew
Camera: Rahul Roy
Editing: Reena Mohan
Sound: Asheesh Pandya

Rahul is a noted documentary filmmaker who has widely worked on the issues of labor and gender in India. His film The City Beautiful masterfully depicts the life of two families in an Indian working-class colony, focussing on the decline of traditional handloom industry because of globalization. His recent work The Factory (2015) is about the struggle of Maruti automobile workers in New Delhi. For more than two years, 147 workers from the Maruti Suzuki plant were kept behind bars without bail or any charge sheet being presented to the defence counsel. Rahul has followed their crisis and struggle from 2013 to 2015. Read more about the film in this Indian Express piece.

Director contact info: rahulroy63@gmail.com

 
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Posted by on November 11, 2015 in Class, Documentary, Global Economy, Manufacturing, Technology, Textile Industry, Women, Working Class

 

Traceable (2014)

11 Nov

http://raindancefestival.org/features-2014/traceable/

This documentary examines the fashion industry process, and its conscience, from a designers’ perspective.

This environmental documentary has a powerful ethical story to tell and makes even the most exhausted eye-rollers sit up and listen.

The 2013 collapse of the Rana Plaza garment factory in Bangladesh put faces on the term ‘garment factory workers’. With this as a backdrop, ‘Traceable’ looks at the local communities behind clothing industries that have retained distinctive crafts for generations. ‘Traceability’ is the aim to have a proper trail for every single step in the supply chain. As well as where, it wants consumers to be concerned with how garments are made. Thousands of hands in the process go untraceable because many farmers, seamstresses and printers simply do not have the technology to be contacted by email or phone.

Director Jennifer Sharpe follows Laura Seigel, a young designer fighting to connect the design world with anonymous artisans. Most designers do not have the time or enough commitment to nurture a direct relationship with the people who make their clothes. This documentary is partly anthropological, as Seigel designs with the creators hand-to-hand and negotiates with them on their own turf. Without being patronising or naive, ‘Traceable’ captures equal and harmonious working partnerships.

 
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Posted by on November 11, 2015 in Consumerism, Documentary, Safety & Health, Textile Industry

 

Precious Memories (2015)

11 Nov

Precious Memories has one act, 84 minutes long.  I wrote the script but not the songs, which are by Sarah Ogan Gunning (“I Hate the Capitalist System”); her brother Jim Garland (“I Don’t Want Your Millions Mister,” the real point of which is that we do); and her half-sister Aunt Molly Jackson (“I Am A Union Woman”), plus two traditional ballads and excerpts from three gospel songs.
THE PLAY: Part memory play, part eulogy, part concert, this one-woman show written by legendary folk singer and community organizer Si Kahn traces the life of Sarah Ogan Gunning, an unsung hero of American folk/labor music history.  The play finds Sarah alone in her Detroit basement apartment on the evening after her sister Aunt Molly Jackson’s funeral, as she attempts to set the record straight and say goodbye.  Although Sarah Ogan Gunning is a name almost unknown to us today, her powerful songs about the coal mining region of Eastern Kentucky in the 1930’s were an influence on Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and other famous folk singers of her day.

Si Kahn <sikahn36@gmail.com

 
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Posted by on November 11, 2015 in Entertainment Industry, Labor History, Musical, Women, Working Class

 

7 Chinese Brothers (2015)

11 Nov

76 min  |  Comedy  |  28 August 2015 (USA)

Director/writer: Bob Byington

Stars: Jason Schwartzman, Stephen Root, Olympia Dukakis
Larry (Jason Schwartzman) is content with his dog Arrow and booze, barely tolerating anything or anyone else. His marginally successful relationships include his grandmother, who keeps him afloat financially, and his best friend Norwood, who provides him with pharmaceuticals. But a chance encounter at a Jiffy Lube gives Larry a beguiling new boss and the impetus to head in another direction for a while. This movie showcases all that may be needed to help a person get unstuck in life: love (or an unrequited crush), friendship (or someone your family likes better than you) and family (or in this case a grandmother who will support you whenever you get fired from a job).

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/28/movies/review-7-chinese-brothers-a-slacker-comedy-starring-jason-schwartzman-and-his-dog.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share

This droll film, written and directed by Bob Byington, drifts aimlessly but appealingly with Mr. Schwartzman as its lost hero.

 
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Posted by on November 11, 2015 in Comedy, Philosophy, Self-Employed/Freelance, Working Class

 
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