82m; France
Director: Agnès Varda
Cast: François Wertheimer, Agnès Varda and Bodan Litnanski
Synopsis (IMDB): An intimate, picaresque inquiry into French life as lived by the country’s poor and its provident, as well as by the film’s own director, Agnes Varda. The aesthetic, political and moral point of departure for Varda are gleaners, those individuals who pick at already-reaped fields for the odd potato, the leftover turnip.
100m; U.S.
Director: James Foley
Cast: Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon and Alec Baldwin
Synopsis (IMDB): An examination of the machinations behind the scenes at a real estate office.
11m
Director: Dominique Basi
Synopsis (CLiFF): Follows Karnel Basi, a public transit bus driver in South Vancouver, along his regular route through the downtown east side to the heart of the city and back again. Along the way he picks up a variety of passengers, struggles to stay on schedule and keep his bus safe. A good student film.
86m; U.S.
Director: Haskell Wexler
Synopsis: In this extraordinary video, Academy Award-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler records the several-year-long struggle of the Los Angeles Bus Riders Union (BRU) to win better service and to challenge the race and class bias in city spending priorities. At 86 minutes, it’s long for classroom use and drags in a few places for many high school students; but what a rich documentary this is. At the outset, Kikanza Ramsey, a young BRU organizer, explains that the union is “a political, social experiment to see if we can build a multiracial, bilingual, gender-balanced mass movement of working class people that is willing to fight for a set of demands that challenges corporate capital.” And this is not mere rhetoric. The remainder of the film brings her words to life, revealing the twists and turns, highs and lows of this struggle as seen through the eyes of participants.
57m
Director: John de Graaf and Hana Jindrova
Synopsis (Bull Frog Films): Under the auspices of the WTO, globalization of world trade seems like a juggernaut that will not be stopped. But is there a way to make trade FAIR? How can retailers and consumers use their purchasing power and market choice to make the world better for people and the environment? What is the promise of product certification and labeling?
BUYER BE FAIR looks at two major trade goods — timber and coffee — to find out how certification works and whether it helps the world’s poor, and their lands. Can the lessons from certification of timber, by the Forest Stewardship Council, and coffee, by Fair Trade, be applied to other products?
Website: http://www.buyerbefair.org/
40m; Turkey
Director: Güliz Saglam, Feryal Saygiligil
Synopsis: Seven workers, all women. Four free-trade zones in four different Turkish cities. Surrounded by high walls, barbed wire fences, very much like a concentration camp. This documentary covers the working conditions of women in the free-trade zones, their experiences, observations and their hopes for the future. The barbed wire fences not only surround the zones but also accentuate the captivity of women workers. So much so that the borders of the zone evade us, inside and outside become indistinguishable.
94m
Director: Toshi Fijiwara
Synopsis: A portrait of documentary filmmaker, Noriaki Tsuchimoto.
78m; U.S.
Director: Michael Curitz
Cast: Richard Barthelmess, Bette Davis and Dorothy Jordan
Synopsis (IMDB): A tenant farmer’s son is caught in the middle of owner-tenant disputes when he falls for the plantation owner’s seductive daughter.
98m; U.S.
Director: Harold Ramis
Cast: Chevy Chase, Rodney Dangerfield and Bill Murray
Synopsis: An exclusive golf course has to deal with a brash new member and a destructive dancing gopher.
107m; Honduras
Director: Sami Kafati
Cast: José Luis López, Saul Toro and Daniel Vasquez
Synopsis (IMDB): The film tells the story of a ruthless landowner who commandeers property (both land and other men’s wives) and leaves a path of human suffering and death in his wake. The film describes an intersecting universe of entrenched power–in which the landowning class, colluding priests, corrupt government officials, violent police, and U.S. businessmen–conspiring to rape the land for their own profit and to suppress the local farmers. In contrast, the working peasants cherish the land as their own and struggle to break free from oppression to build homes and better lives for their families
THE LABOR FILM DATABASE 