Occupation/Type of Work | THE LABOR FILM DATABASE

Industrial Britain (1931)

22 min

Director: Robert Flaherty

Synopsis (British Film Institute):

Industrial Britain represents a watershed in the development of the British documentary movement, the moment when artistic achievement was first blended meaningfully with social intent.

The film developed from John Grierson’s opportunistic recruitment of Robert Flaherty. Flaherty was an anthropologist-cum-filmmaker who shot to worldwide prominence with Nanook of the North (1920), a documentary that detailed the hardships of Eskimo life.

Anxious to secure a prestige director for the project (Anthony Asquith had already turned them down) The Empire Marketing Board turned hopefully to a near-destitute Flaherty. Soured by failure in Hollywood and inspired by the high-seriousness of early Soviet cinema, Flaherty exchanged the exoticism of his previous work for an appreciation of Britain’s industrial workers. Many of his sequences – like the English potter – were considered successful enough to merit a subsequent release as shorts.

http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/513737/index.html

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Posted by Metro Council on March 19, 2012 in Documentary, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing

The Industrial City (1970)

19 Mar

16m; U.S.

Director: Encyclopedia Brittanica Educational Corporation

Synopsis: Study of Detroit as an automotive industrial city.

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Posted by Metro Council on March 19, 2012 in Documentary, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Working Class

The Industrial Workers (1970)

19 Mar

16m; U.S.

Director: Encyclopedia Brittanica Educational Corporation

Synopsis: An analysis of some of the implications of automation in a mass-production factory. The film points out that automation can free the worker but it poses a challenge to retrain and adjust to changing circumstances.

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Posted by Metro Council on March 19, 2012 in Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Outsourcing, Working Class

The Inheritance (1964)

19 Mar

58m; U.S.

Director: Harold Mayer and Lynne Rhodes Mayer

Synopsis: The Inheritance shows what life was really like for immigrants and working Americans from the turn of the century through the fight for civil rights in the 1960s. This stirring history of our country shows their struggle to put down roots, form labor unions, survive wars, and finally, create a new and better life for themselves and our nation.

Our film explores a landscape largely unknown to the present generation—the dim sweatshops, coal mines and textile mills filled with children; the anxious years of the depression and labor’s bloody struggle for the right to organize; the battlefields of WW I and II; the seldom seen newsreel footage of the Memorial Day massacre at The Republic Steel strike in Chicago; the civil rights struggle— as every generation fights again to preserve and extend its freedoms. This is the film’s theme.

Contact: The film is available in 4 parts on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWDPHQX0S0w

Harold Mayer and Lynne Rhodes Mayer

Harold Mayer Productions

New Milford, CT

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Posted by Metro Council on March 19, 2012 in Available Online, Blacks, Children, Construction Trades, Documentary, Immigrants/Immigration, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Organizing, Politics, Streaming Online (Youtube, Vimeo), Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts, Working Class

Tags: Mining

Inside Detroit (1956)

19 Mar

82m;

Director: Fred F. Sears

Synopsis: autoworkers.

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Posted by Metro Council on March 19, 2012 in Documentary, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Working Class

Intel inside – Where? (2005)

19 Mar

60m; Israel

Director: Ayelet Bargur

Synopsis: What happens when globalization — in the form of high-tech giant Intel — comes to a small, remote community in southern Israel?

Contact: Ayelet Bargur, eyelet6@013.net 971-3-6041225; 972-52-2204734

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Posted by Metro Council on March 19, 2012 in Documentary, Global Economy, White Collar

Iron Ladies (2000)

19 Mar

30m; U.S.

Director: Kennedy Wheatley

Synopsis (Filmmakers Library): The Los Angeles Ironworkers union has 3,000 men and eight women. The apprenticeship program is rigorous; only 30% make it through the three-year training. In this documentary, veteran women ironworkers tell stories of surviving as the only female working on a construction site.

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Posted by Metro Council on March 19, 2012 in Documentary, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Women, Working Class

Iron Maze (1991)

19 Mar

104m; U.S.

Director: Hiroaki Yoshida

Cast: Jeff Fahey, Bridget Fonda and Hiroaki Murakami

Synopsis (IMDB): In Corinth, a dying town 15 miles from Pittsburg: One evening, a Japanese businessman, who wanted to tear down the closed iron mills to build an amusement park, is found half dead in his mill. Bellboy Barry admits to have done it – in self defense. Chief Ruhle interrogates him and Sugito’s young wife and business partners, but it takes a while, until he gets through the maze of apparently contradictory statements.

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Posted by Metro Council on March 19, 2012 in Drama, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Working Class

Ironeaters

19 Mar

85m; Bangladesh

Director: Shaheen Dill-Riaz

Synopsis: The Ironeaters is a beautiful film about the workers in the ship dismantling industry. This industry, which now employs three million workers has replaced the jute textile industry which was destroyed by the IMF and World Bank in order to eliminate competition to the international chemical companies. The workers in the Ironeaters face a brutal exploitation at 70 cents a day, and deadly health and safety conditions, which destroy their bodies and their lives. This non-union industry, with contractors pushing the workers to get the job done regardless of the costs, and they are deadly as they disfigure many of the workers. The systemic poverty used by the contractors drives these workers to desperation. This is the first film to show the workers in this industry and the work they do as “the rope carriers go home without a penny of wages.”

Contact: info@lemmefilm.de

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Posted by Metro Council on March 19, 2012 in Construction Trades, Global Economy, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Safety & Health