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Category Archives: Occupation/Type of Work

The Nanny Business (2010)

13 Jun

44m; Canada

Director: Shelley Saywell

Synopsis: Traces the story of Edelyn Pineda who left her three children behind and paid thousands of dollars to a recruitment agency in Canada to make the arrangements and book her with a family. She arrived to discover that the agent had taken her fee but the “employer” who signed her contract was not interested in her services. Joelina Maluto came to Canada after working in Hong Kong and the Middle East because “I heard Canada was a good country, and after two years I could bring my children here.” Instead, she arrived to find she had no job and was forced to live in her agent’s basement with 16 other nannies for the next 2 and a half months. When the agent finally got her a job, the employer forced her to work 18 hour days. Edelyn and Joelina were among several nannies brave enough to go public about their experiences in the hope of forcing change. Their stories are put into wider context by journalist Susan McClelland, whose own search for a nanny led her to this story, and whose subsequent article “Nanny Abuse” for Walrus Magazine won an Amnesty Award.

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Documentary, Service Workers, Women

 

The Red Tail (2009)

13 Jun

86m; U.S.

Director: Dawn Mikkelson & Melissa Koch

Synopsis: In August of 2005 the mechanics at Northwest Airlines went on strike. Soon after, an anonymous flight attendant quit her job rather than cross the picket line. Disillusioned and inspired, this woman went in search of an established documentary filmmaker to tell the story of the workers of NWA.

Contact: info@redtailmovie.com http://www.redtailmovie.com

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Collective Bargaining, Documentary, Global Economy, Organizing, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts, Technology, Transportation

 

The Secret of My Success (1987)

13 Jun

111m; U.S.

Director: Herbert Ross

Cast: Michael J. Fox, Helen Slater and Richard Jordan

Synopsis (IMDB): Brantley Foster, a well-educated kid from Kansas, has always dreamed of making it big in New York. On his first work day in New York, he is fired in a hostile take-over and learns that jobs – and girls – are hard to get. When Brantley visits his distant uncle, Howard Prescott, who runs a multi-million-dollar company, he is given a job in the company’s mail room. Then Brantley meets Christy Wills, who happens to be one of the top executives. Brantley sees how poorly the company is being run and decides to create a position under the name Carlton Whitfield, to influence and improve the company’s operations. Soon things get unexpectedly out of hand, not in the least because of his aunt, his girl and leading a double life.

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Comedy, White Collar, Working Class

 

The Sixth Section (2003)

13 Jun

26m; U.S.

Director: Alex Rivera

Synopsis: The Sixth Section opens a surprising window on immigration in the 21st century. Following a group of Mexican immigrants from the tiny desert town of Boqueron who now work in upstate New York, the film documents their struggle to support themselves — and their hometown 3,000 miles to the south. To do this, the men form a ‘union’ that raises money in the form of weekly donations of $10 or $20 from each of its members in New York. In the past few years the group has brought electricity, an ambulance, and, most dramatically, a 2,000-seat baseball stadium to Boqueron. The Sixth Section is an intimate portrait of how the ‘American Dream’ is being redefined by today’s immigrants.

Contact: http://www.pbs.org/pov/thesixthsection/

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Documentary, Immigrants/Immigration, Migrant workers

 

The Stone Carvers (1984)

13 Jun

30m; U.S.

Director: Marjorie Hunt, Paul Wagner

Cast: Vincent Palumbo and Roger Morigi

Synopsis (IMDB): A look at some of the last stone carvers working in the United States, those completing the sculptures adorning the Washington National Cathedral. They discuss their craft and the cultural forces which helped define it, as well as the fading use of stone ornamentation in architecture and the history of stone carving, and they tour the cathedral to point out the history behind some of the work.

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Construction Trades, Documentary

 

The Temptation of St Tony (2009)

13 Jun

110m; Estonia/Finland/Sweden

Director: Veiko Õunpuu

Synopsis: Veiko Õunpuu’s follow-up to the award-winning AUTUMN BALL (2008 AFI European Union Film Showcase) confirms him as one of Europe’s brightest young talents. Filmed in striking widescreen black and white, Õunpuu’s tale follows the passive, put-upon Tony (hangdog Taavi Eelmaa) through increasingly surreal tableaux: his father’s funeral procession, interrupted by a car crash; a bourgeois dinner party disrupted by vagrants; the shuttering of a factory and firing of its workers; and a rural police station manned by comically grotesque cops from which Tony, on a whim, helps a mysterious young beauty to escape. Following her to a sinister cabaret, Tony may have discovered the heart of darkness of today’s Eastern Europe. Winner, Horizons Award, 2009 Venice Film Festival; East of the West Award, 2010, Karlovy Vary Film Festival; Official Selection, 2010 Sundance and Rotterdam Film Festivals.

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Experimental, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Unemployment-Wages

 

The Train (1964)

13 Jun

133m; U.S.

Director: John Frankenheimer

Cast: Burt Lancaster, Paul Scofield and Jeanne Moreau

Synopsis: It is the fall of 1944 and the Allies are advancing to liberate Paris.  German Colonel Von Waldheim decides to seize hundreds of France’s most famous artworks and ship them back to Germany via train.  The French resistance wants to stop this and a team of working-class train operators and workmen are given the mission.

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Crime-Action, Transportation, War, Working Class

 

The Uprising of ’34 (1995)

13 Jun

87m; U.S.

Director: George Stoney, Judith Helfand & Susanne Rostock

Synopsis: THE UPRISING OF ’34 tells the story of the General Strike of 1934, a massive but little-known strike by hundreds of thousands of Southern cotton mill workers during the Great Depression. The mill workers’ defiant stance – and the remarkable grassroots organizing that led up to it – challenged a system of mill owner control that had shaped life in cotton mill communities for decades.

Contact: First Run Icarus Films (http://www.frif.com/cat97/t-z/the_upri.html) / http://www.pbs.org/pov/uprisingof34/

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in A: Highly Recommended Labor Films, Documentary, Labor History, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts, Textile Industry

 

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The Waiters (2006)

13 Jun

85m; U.S.

Director: Derik Wingo

Cast: Derik Wingo, Lorrainne Petersen and Scott Vogel

Synopsis: Taylor Starks and his co-workers, all aspiring actors, toil in a Los Angeles restaurant while “waiting” for their big break.

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Comedy, Drama, Entertainment Industry, Service Workers

 

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The Yes Men (2003)

13 Jun

80m; U.S.
Director: Chris Smith, Dan Ollman, Sarah Price

Synopsis (IMDB): A comedic documentary which follows The Yes Men, a small group of prankster activists, as they gain world-wide notoriety for impersonating the World Trade Organization on television and at business conferences around the world. The film begins when two members of The Yes Men, Andy and Mike, set up a website that mimics the World Trade Organization’s–and it’s mistaken for the real thing. They play along with the ruse and soon find themselves invited to important functions as WTO representatives. Delighted to represent the organization they politically oppose, Andy and Mike don thrift-store suits and set out to shock unwitting audiences with darkly comic satire that highlights the worst aspects of global free trade

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Big Business/Corporations, Documentary, Finance, Global Economy

 
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