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Category Archives: Occupation/Type of Work

The Roof (Il Tetto) (1956)

26 Apr

Director: Vittorio De Sica
Italy; 91m

Natale, an apprentice bricklayer, and Luisa, who has no skill, marry and try to live with Natale’s parents and other relatives in one apartment, what might happen in the poorest classes in Rome about 1950. After a quarrel Natale and Luisa precipitately leave without a place to live. The remainder of the film is devoted to their finding housing. The solution is building a one room brick dwelling as a squat on unused railway land on the outskirts of Rome. As this is illegal Natale gets his workmates to assist him during the night. Provided a dwelling has a door and a roof the householder cannot be evicted. At dawn when the police arrive to remove them the dwelling is complete except for part of the roof, but a humane policeman looks the other way. We suppose that Natale and Luisa, now pregnant, live happily ever after. (Wikipedia)

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Cities-Urban, Class, Construction Trades, Drama, Working Class

 

SF Hotel Workers Strike of 1941

26 Apr

by Lester Balog. This historic footage shows the 1941 San Francisco Labor Day march and the 1941 hotel workers’ strike. Screened (with “SF Labor on the March”) at the 2003 San Francisco LaborFest.

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Documentary, Service Workers, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

Shattering the Silences: The Case for Minority Faculty

26 Apr

86m

Shattering the Silences: The Case for Minority Faculty offers everyone in higher education an unprecedented opportunity to see American campuses through the eyes of minority faculty.

Across America campus diversity is under attack; affirmative action programs are banned, ethnic studies departments defunded, multicultural scholarship impugned. Even so, faculty of color remain less than 9.2% of all full professors and minority student enrollment is dropping for the first time in 30 years.

Shattering the Silences cuts through the rhetoric of the current Culture Wars by telling the stories of eight pioneering scholars – African American, Latino, Native American and Asian American. As we watch them teach, mentor and conduct research, we realize in concrete terms how a diverse faculty enriches and expands traditional disciplines and contributes to a more inclusive campus environment.

available from California NewsReel

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Documentary, Education

 

Struggles in Steel: The Fight for Equal Opportunity (1996)

26 Apr

58m; U.S.

Director: Tony Buba, Raymond Henderson

Cast: Raymond Henderson, Dennis C. Dickerson and Katrina Heiss

Synopsis (IMDB): This documentary tells the forgotten story of the African-American struggle for equality in the U.S. steel industry (based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania). In a series of interviews intermixed with archival footage and stills, we learn how these workers faced and overcame discrimination that came from white workers, the big steel companies, and even from their own unions.

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Blacks, Documentary, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Labor History, Organizing

 

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Salesman (1969)

26 Apr

91m; U.S.

Director: David and Albert Maysles

Synopsis: This landmark documentary follows four Boston bible salesmen as they struggle to make a living in the cutthroat world of door-to-door sales. The film follows the salesmen as they wheedle, connive and cajole their way into homes and wallets. As the pressure of the job bears down, the film reveals the dark underside of the American Dream.

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Documentary, Self-Employed/Freelance, Working Class

 

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960)

26 Apr

89m; U.K.

Director: Karel Reisz

Cast:  Albert Finney, Shirley Anne Field and Rachel Roberts

Synopsis (IMDB): Arthur, one of Britain’s angry young men of the 1960s, is a hardworking factory worker who slaves all week at his mindless job for his modest wages. Come Saturday night, he’s off to the pub for a loud and rowdy beer session. With him is Brenda, his girlfriend of the moment. Married to a fellow worker, she is nonetheless captivated by his rugged good looks and his devil-may-care attitude. Soon a new love interest Doreen enters and a week later, Brenda announces she’s pregnant. She tells Arthur she needs money for an abortion, and Arthur promises to pay for it. By this time, his relationship with Doreen has ripened and Brenda, hearing of it, confronts him. He denies everything, but it’s obvious that their affair is all but over.

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Drama, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Romance, Working Class

 

The Scar (1976)

26 Apr

112m; Poland

Director: Krzysztof Kieslowski

Cast: Franciszek Pieczka, Mariusz Dmochowski and Jerzy Stuhr

Synopsis (IMDB): 1970. After discussions and dishonest negotiations, a decision is taken as to where a large new chemical factory is to be built and Bednarz, an honest Party man, is put in charge of the construction. He used to live in the small town where the factory is to be built, his wife used to be a Party activist there, and he has unpleasant memories of it. But he sets to the task in the belief that he will build a place where people will live and work well. His intentions and convictions, however, conflict with those of the townspeople who are primarily concerned with their short-term needs. Disillusioned, Bednarz gives up his post.

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Drama, Environment, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing

 

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The Scavengers (2007)

26 Apr

69m; Turkey

Director: Karahber

Synopsis: Kurdish migrants collect paper to sell for recycling to survive.

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Drama, Migrant workers

 

Land of Destiny (2010)

20 Apr

78m; U.S.

Director: Brett Story

Synopsis: A hard-working petrochemical town is rocked by revelations that its workers suffer an epidemic of cancers. But even more terrifying is the looming spectre of deindustrialization and joblessness. In the rich fabric of the city’s landscape – rows of boarded storefronts, the bright sprawl of petrochemical plants and the swollen rooms of hospital wards and crowded bars – one finds a microcosm of the 21st century. Tattooed men serving fries, basement musicians, boilermakers and volunteer firemen, heartbroken widows and an optimistic mayor – the lives of a diverse medley of characters intersect to reveal the dramas and contradictions of an industrial town out of sync with a post-industrial world. As the dystopian architecture of the petrochemical plants, squatted like crushed space stations just meters away from homes and schoolyards, give way to the spaces that make this city a community, we begin to see what it is that everyone seems so afraid to lose. A portrait of a working-class city in paralysis and a mediation on work and place in the modern economy, Land of Destiny offers a poignant and universal story about work, community, and struggle in an era of globalization.

Contact: http://www.bunburyfilms.com/films/trailer/doc/lod.html

 
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Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Documentary, Global Economy, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Unemployment-Wages, Working Class

 

The Last Peasants (2003)

20 Apr

150m; Romania

Director: Angus MacQueen

Synopsis: THE LAST PEASANTS tracks three families through a remote village in Romania’s Maramures area. the film looks at the changes imposed on the local community by the collapse of Communism and the new relationship with Western Europe.

 
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Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Documentary, Farm & Food, Politics, Working Class

 
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