1937, Flint, PBS, Walter Reuther and the Rise of the UAW, 15 minutes
Category Archives: Occupation/Type of Work
Flint Sitdown Strike — Part 1
IBEW: Lighting the Path
Published on Oct 24, 2014
“Our smiles can light up a room. Our work can light up an entire city. We’re the men and women of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers.”
Outreach video for women carpenters; 3 minute video designed for use on social media.
Waydowntown
2000
Comedy
Canada
Director: Gary Burns
Writers: Gary Burns, James Martin, Patrick McLaughlin
87 Minutes
This satirical lens into office work, corporate culture, and urban life involves a wager between co-workers as to who can last the longest without venturing outdoors. With their office building connected to both a well-stocked shopping center and their apartments, this appears a cinch. However, nearly a month into the contest at a retirement party, things go awry when one of the bettors, assigned to follow the CEO, discovers an unsavory secret about him.
Union Time
Filmmaker: Matthew Barr
A true David versus Goliath story, “Union Time” is a promotional teaser for a documentary in production about the successful fight to unionize the world’s largest pork slaughterhouse, located in Tar Heel, NC.
Bread and Roses: The Lawrence Textile Strike
6:17m
The Lawrence Textile Strike was a strike of immigrant workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts in 1912 led by the Industrial Workers of the World. Prompted by one mill owner’s decision to lower wages when a new law shortening the workweek went into effect in January, the strike spread rapidly through the town, growing to more than twenty thousand workers at nearly every mill within a week. The strike, which lasted more than two months and which defied the assumptions of conservative trade unions within the American Federation of Labor that immigrant, largely female and ethnically divided workers could not be organized, was successful; within a year, however, the union had largely collapsed and most of the gains achieved by the workers were lost.
Pioneer (2013)
Norway–just optioned for US remake by Clooney. North Sea oil rig deep sea divers, workplace injury law suit.
A thriller set at the beginning of the 1980’s Norwegian Oil Boom and centered on a diver whose obsession with reaching the bottom of the Norwegian Sea leads to tragedy.
PIONEER is set in the early 1980s, at the beginning of the Norwegian Oil Boom when enormous oil and gas deposits were discovered in the North Sea. Authorities aim to bring the oil ashore and Petter, a professional diver, has the discipline, strength and courage to take on the world’s most dangerous mission. But a sudden, tragic accident changes everything. Petter is sent on a perilous journey and gradually, he realizes that he is in way over his head and that his life is at stake.
Director: Erik Skjoldbjærg
Writers: Nikolaj Frobenius, Hans Gunnarsson, 3 more credits »
Stars: Aksel Hennie, Wes Bentley, Stephen Lang |
The Song of the Shirt (1979)
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Cast: Martha Gibson, Geraldine Pilgrim, Anna McNiff, Liz Myers, Jill Greenhalgh, Sally Cranfield, Alfred Molina |
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An investigation into the position of working women in the 1840s, the effects of protectionist ‘philanthropy’ and the resistance to it. Explores the plight of a group of women working in the new ‘sweated’ clothes trade in London. |
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| Originally intended as a history of the welfare state, as well as a contribution to debates on feminist history, issues of free trade against philanthropy and capitalist expansion against protectionism, The Song of the Shirt became a subject of debate in itself, not least thanks to its four-year gestation.Many different groups, including Women’s Aid and the Feminist History Project, were involved during this long production period, and as a result the final film had a broader agenda (and therefore audience) than was originally planned. While it still addresses ideas of feminist history and Marxist theory, it can also be read as a rather more ambitious project that fuses the history of fashion, literacy and sexuality.
It is constructed as a documentary, although the use of multiple-screen effects, monitors displaying text and projected backdrops constantly disrupts the flow of information. Few dates are revealed in the film, forcing us to address the arguments rather than the chronology. It moves back and forth between locations and eras, juxtaposed in such a way as to highlight the contradictions in the labour market. Close-ups of women and characters in the dramatised scenes are avoided, and in the tribunal sequence the figure-of-eight camera movements suggest aimlessness. The women’s readings, both singly and in groups, are based on a story that appeared in the magazine Notes to the People. ‘A Page for the Ladies’ argues that all classes of women are oppressed. Women of different classes read the text in different ways, with other voices of workers and political writers given equal footing with the text. The Song of the Shirt‘s combination of relentless political content and a dislocated and disruptive presentation makes it stand out from its contemporaries in its ambition to present a genuinely feminist independent film. Co-director Sue Clayton, a graduate of the Royal College of Art, has continued to explore these themes through her work with the Independent Filmmakers’ Association and Screen magazine. Emma Hedditch |
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