20m; U.S.
Director: Michael Hamm, Jonathan King
Synopsis: This story is about the 2,000 independent truck drivers working at the Port of Oakland, The film gives us a look into the lives of the drivers and their struggles to earn a living wage, support their families, and stay healthy as they do their jobs, transporting goods in and out of the port. It also shows their efforts to build a community coalition to protect their jobs and their health and make their voices heard.
85m; Mexico
Director: Benito Alizraki
Synopsis: Four independent stories based on writer Francisco Rojas Gonzáles’s work, depicting the reality of Mexican indian people
60 min; U.K.
Director: Platform Films
Synopsis: British Rail workers fight to end privatization of rail system.
Contact: Link to rail union website: http://www.rmt.org.uk/
43m; Japan
Director: Akira Matsubara & Video Press
Synopsis: Examines the cause of the disastrous Amagasaki rail accident in Osaka, Japan. This train wreck killed over a 100 people and the causes were directly related to the privatization and massive speed-up of railway workers.
116m; France
Director: Lucas Belvaux
Cast: Eric Caravaca, Lucas Belvaux and Claude Semal
Synopsis: Laid-off French steelworkers turn to crime. Explores frustrations of men who find themselves no longer useful members of society but takes a fatal turn into a robbery/thriller and deteriorates into pointless violence.
Contact: almost forgot to mention one film (an excellent fit!!): LA RAISON DU PLUS FAIBLE, by Lucas Belvaux. It is distributed in the US, but there’s no print for now, but there should be one for the fall. You can contact Wendy Lidell on my behalf if you don’t know her at International Film Circuit: 212.777.5690 or wlidell@infc.us. If she doesn’t have a print by then, I might be able to get one from France. – I almost forgot to mention one film (an excellent fit!!): LA RAISON DU PLUS FAIBLE, by Lucas Belvaux. It is distributed in the US, but there’s no print for now, but there should be one for the fall. You can contact Wendy Lidell on my behalf if you don’t know her at International Film Circuit: 212.777.5690 or wlidell@infc.us. If she doesn’t have a print by then, I might be able to get one from France.
125m; France
Director: Lucas Belvaux
Cast: Yvan Attal, Anne Consigny and André Marcon
Synopsis: Stanislaff Graff, a rich industrialist and jetsetting playboy with a wife and a lover, is snatched by kidnappers who demand a fifty million euro ransom. The main question for his board is whether his life is worth more than twenty million. Based on a true story. Told entirely from the industrialist’s point of view, there’s really nothing here about work or workers, and even the question about what a life is worth is not explored much or well. While it’s barely hinted that the kidnappers may be disgruntled workers, this too is left unexplored.
28m; U.S.
Director: Maria Brooks
Synopsis: Workers who rebuilt San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake.
20m; U.S.
Director: Karin T. Mak
Synopsis: The incredible story of resistance, courage and hope by women workers in China battling cadmium poisoning and demanding justice from the local government and their employer, a multi-national battery manufacturer.
91m; China
Director: Yimou Zhang
Cast: Li Gong, Wen Jiang and Rujun Ten
Synopsis (IMDB): In 1930s China a young woman is sent by her father to marry the leprous owner of a winery. In the nearby red sorghum fields she falls for one of his servants. When the master dies she finds herself inheriting the isolated business
2007 35 mins. Joe Hodges
A second glass plant existed right across the street from LOF on MacCorkle Ave. SE in the Kanawha City section of Charleston. This plant became the largest producer of glass bottles in the world by the 1930s. In 1917, just one year after the LOF plant was founded, the Owens-Illinois Company began manufacturing fruit jars, jars for industrial products, and after Prohibition ended, beer bottles. This film tells the story of WV native son Michael Joseph Owens, the inventor of the bottle-making machine that revolutionized the glass industry worldwide. Photos of workers are shown, and videotape-showing reunions are included. The plant closed in 1963. Many workers at this plant would walk across the street and work at the LOF plant when things were slow.
Access: Joseph D. Hodges, 5426 Lancaster Ave. SE, Charleston, WV 25304, 925-1819, joe1819@suddenlink.net or David Radford, 2950 Pine St., Belle, WV, 595-1090. The WV State Archives has copies of both films LOF and OI films, made available to reseachers. Copies of both LOF and OI glass factory films should be available from WVLC and KCPL in summer 2009.
THE LABOR FILM DATABASE 