96 min/Broomfi eld/UK/2006
Broomfield’s fictional feature film, Ghosts (2006), is based on interviews and articles gathered by the journalist Hsai-Hung Pai during her investigation into the 2004 Morecambe Bay cockling tragedy. Twenty-three undocumented migrant workers from China, all unfamiliar with the geography, language and customs of the area, were drowned after being caught out by incoming tides on the extensive mud flats of Morcambe Bay. Their deaths are dramatised in Ghosts which, whilst focusing on a single doomed work crew, is the story of workers who, in desperate need to support their families in China, resort to illegal immigration to countries such as the UK where they became part of the significant number of foreign-born precariat under-class workers. Th e cockle gatherers are representative of a signifi cant class of modern slavery, being bound to criminal gang bosses by a debt servitude that leaves them unable to escape their dangerous jobs. Broomfield deftly dramatises the process in which a Chinese worker pays smugglers a significant sum of money, before taking terrible risks (such as being transported by container), in order to enter the British workforce, where they are subsequently crowded into tiny cottages and treated akin to slaves before being sent out to work in conditions and environments that are dangerous and unsupervised.
(London Labour Film festival 2017)
Category Archives: Occupation/Type of Work
GHOSTS
WILD MOUSE [WILDE MAUS]
A music critic in midlife crisis seeks revenge on the boss who fired him in this satirical seriocomedy, the directorial debut of actor Josef Hader (THE BONEMAN, STEFAN ZWEIG: FAREWELL TO EUROPE). Unwilling to come clean about his termination, Georg (Hader) pretends to go to work each day, but instead hangs out in Vienna’s Prater amusement park, where he befriends ride operator Erich (Georg Friedrich), previously his childhood tormentor. Georg becomes increasingly attracted to Erich’s Romanian girlfriend Nicoletta (Crina Semciuc), more alienated from his therapist wife, Johanna (Pia Hierzegger) and more aggressive in his stealth harassment of his ex-boss (Jörg Hartmann). Official Selection, 2017 Berlin Film Festival. DIR/SCR Josef Hader; PROD Veit Heiduschka, Michael Katz. Austria/Germany, 2017, color, 103 min. In German and Italian with English subtitles. NOT RATED
Run Time: 103 Minutes
Genre: Dark comedy
Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken!
U.S.A. (Director: Morgan Spurlock, Screenwriters: Jeremy Chilnick, Morgan Spurlock, Producers: Keith Calder, Jessica Calder, Spencer Silna, Nicole Barton, Jeremy Chilnick, Matthew Galkin) — Muckraking filmmaker Morgan Spurlock reignites his battle with the food industry – this time from behind the register – as he opens his own fast food restaurant. U.S. Premiere (Sundance 2018)
A BETTER LIFE
(Chris Weitz, US 2011, 98 min., 35mm)
Set in contemporary East Los Angeles the film, whose plot partially parallels that of Bicycle Thief, sympathetically depicts experiences of undocumented Mexican immigrants including manual labor, schools, gangs, family, ICE and deportation. Mexican-American actor Demián Bichir received an Oscar nomination for his moving portrayal of a father who risks everything to make una vida mejor for his son.
Last Reel (2015)
Directed by: Steven Bognar
Running Time: 8 min
Starring:
Website: N/a
Synopsis: Film projectionists at the Little Art Theatre in Ohio speak about the craft of 35mm projection and the heartache in transitioning to digital formats, feeling the loss of yet another handcrafted profession.
If You Could Walk In My Shoes (2015)
Directed by: Ricardo E. Causo
Running Time: 27 min
Starring:
Website: N/a
Synopsis: Roberto Marquez is an artisan from Ecuador, who immigrated to the United States over 14 years ago. He has been living and working in New York City as a shoe cobbler, and is an undocumented immigrant. In 2013, Roberto, and his wife Maria, welcomed a baby girl into their family. A first-generation American Citizen. Roberto struggles to support his family, here and abroad. In spite of the odds they are up against, he reflects on his own life, and the future he wants for his family
Hazelnuts and Child Labor (2015)
Directed by: Mehmet Ülger
Running Time: 52 min
Starring:
Website: N/a
Synopsis: In 2010 Zara, a nine year old, picks hazelnuts with her family in the Turkish Black Sea region. Working 11 hours per day during the harvest in August, often seven days a week, in the evening, they return to a tent camp where no facilities are available. Making this journey every year, Zara and her friends routinely return to school late. Five years later has anything changed? Has child labor been reduced? Have the facilities for seasonal workers been improved? And how fare the children who are doing the hard labor?
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