1h 20m
The story of a group of young people who created history’s only collectively run, worker’s self managed, anti-profit, kosher restaurant and who, even after the restaurant closed, continued to live according to their early idealism. Many of their adult children are dedicated their lives to similar idealistic goals.
Director
Category Archives: Self-Employed/Freelance
Full Time (2023)
- 16m
A skateboarder played by Andrew Lutheran (Goldbergs, breaking bad, Palo Alto) gets offered a full time job by a mysterious man played by Iddo Goldberg (Peaky blinders, Snowpiercer) to stand in a square all day. He is making more money the longer he stands there but his life is passing him by.
- Director
- Writer
- Stars
The Union (2024)
Mike (Mark Wahlberg), a construction worker from Jersey, is quickly thrust into the world of super spies and secret agents when his high school sweetheart, Roxanne (Halle Berry), suddenly comes back into his life and recruits him on a high-stakes U.S. intelligence mission. Watch on Netflix.
Netflix hit “The Union” is a miss
Reviewed by Chris Garlock (Labor Heritage Foundation newsletter)
The Union is a hit on Netflix, but it’s not really about the labor movement, and it’s a pretty lousy movie, despite starring Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry. Wahlberg plays Mike, a construction worker in New Jersey, who finds himself thrust into the world of super spies when his high school sweetheart, Roxanne (played by Berry), enlists his help on a high-stakes US intelligence mission for a shadowy group of ex-agency operatives called The Union. It’s a telling sign that a film called The Union doesn’t bother to say whether Mike’s construction job is union or not. J.K. Simmons runs the team and does have a cool class-conscious rationale for its existence: “(We’re the) invisible army that keeps the world running. The people who do the actual work. Street smarts over book smarts. Blue collar, not blue blood. Able to build our cities, keep production lines humming. That’s who we are. We get shit done.” Unfortunately that’s about the only nod to labor in the film, which has been getting abysmal viewer reviews, the best of which call it “generic” and “cheesy”. Action fans will be disappointed by the rote gunplay, endless — and pointless — car chases and lame dialogue from movie stars who — like us — deserve better. And the big plot twist involving a traitor in The Union is not only completely unbelievable, but misses an obvious opportunity to take a shot at scabs. Hate to say it, but this is one union you won’t want to join.
Got an opinion you’d like to share about labor art you’ve seen or heard lately? Email us at info@laborheritage.org.
La Cola (The Line)
The Line is a drama from Argentina. Written and directed by Enrique 
Liporace and Ezequiel C. Inzaghi, starring renowned Argentine acting professionals such as Alejandro Awada, Lucrecia Oviedo, Ana María Picchio and Antonio Gasalla.
The Line focuses on the experiences of Félix Cayetano Gómez, who lives in the city of Buenos Aires and has to scramble daily to make ends meet. This man discovers a way to earn money by waiting in lines to run different errands or do paperwork for other people, in exchange of a sum of money.
But Félix is not the only one who works as a “line man”, there are many others doing the same job and all of them dream about forming an employee’s union that can group and protect them.
At some point in the story, those other workers reveal to Félix a criminal plan that would allow him to collect much more money: it is related to waiting in lines to do education, health and work related paperwork. As a consequence of his job, the main character will become a witness and an accomplice of a tragic but comical reality that will also affect his own life.
Original Title: La cola.
Starring: Alejandro Awada, Lucrecia Oviedo, Antonio Gasalla, Ana María Piccio.
Genre: Drama.
Directed by: Enrique Liporace, Ezequiel C. Inzaghi.
Country of Origin: Argentina.
Running Time: 99 minutes.
Rated: PG-13
Released in Buenos Aires: September 13th, 2012.
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-_73RuRg_w
Gaucho del Norte (2015)
54 min | Documentary, Adventure, Western
Directors: Andres Caballero, Sofian Khan
In the quiet, bucolic Patagonian countryside in the town of Bahia Murta with 587 inhabitants we meet Eraldo Pacheco, a thoughtful man who has recently arrived at a momentous decision. “Things are worse here than ever,” Eraldo tells his father and family as he announces his plan to move to the United States to fulfill a three-year contract tending sheep almost 6,000 miles away in rural Idaho. In this observational documentary of impressive beauty and painterly cinematic images the imbalance of economic forces is seen in high relief.
With poetic subtlety the film speaks to the economic fragility of these remote and rural communities in South America as well as the precarious and fickle agricultural economy up north. Once in Salt Lake City, Utah, we meet Jhonny Qispe, from Peru, who also made the trek up north and who also left a wife and two children behind.
Peaceful, meditative scenes envelop the viewer – vast desert, steep mountains, winter’s terrain and thousands of sheep belie the angst of the economic woes that cause a separation between a man and his beloved, his elders, his children, and the spiritual majesty of his homeland. Jhonny is also deeply invested in being a provider for his family. But what might seem like a pastoral, nomadic life is a lonely and tough existence.
While Eraldo is up north, he continues to fret about not being in Chile tending to his family, especially his elderly parents. Did he make the right choice?
Buzzard (2014)
97 min | Comedy, Drama | 6 March 2015 (USA)
Director/writer: Joel Potrykus
Stars: Joshua Burge, Joel Potrykus, Teri Ann Nelson
Marty is a caustic, small-time con artist drifting from one scam to the next. When his latest ruse goes awry, mounting paranoia forces him from his lousy small town temp job to the desolate streets of Detroit with nothing more than a pocket full of bogus checks, a dangerously altered Nintendo® Power Glove, and a bad temper. Albert Camus meets Freddy Krueger in BUZZARD, a hellish and hilarious riff on the struggles of the American working class.
NYTimes: Review: In ‘Buzzard,’ an Angry, Unkempt Antihero
An unsparing portrait of an office temp and scam artist near the bottom of the economic food chain.
NYTimes: Joel Potrykus’s Film ‘Buzzard’ Is Inspired by Dead-End Jobs
The writer and director’s deadpan comedies have followed a man-child on the skids.
7 Chinese Brothers (2015)
76 min | Comedy | 28 August 2015 (USA)
Director/writer: Bob Byington
Stars: Jason Schwartzman, Stephen Root, Olympia Dukakis
Larry (Jason Schwartzman) is content with his dog Arrow and booze, barely tolerating anything or anyone else. His marginally successful relationships include his grandmother, who keeps him afloat financially, and his best friend Norwood, who provides him with pharmaceuticals. But a chance encounter at a Jiffy Lube gives Larry a beguiling new boss and the impetus to head in another direction for a while. This movie showcases all that may be needed to help a person get unstuck in life: love (or an unrequited crush), friendship (or someone your family likes better than you) and family (or in this case a grandmother who will support you whenever you get fired from a job).
This droll film, written and directed by Bob Byington, drifts aimlessly but appealingly with Mr. Schwartzman as its lost hero.
Labour in a Single Shot
http://www.labour-in-a-single-shot.net
Starting in 2011 artist, curator, and author Antje Ehmann and filmmaker, video artist and author Harun Farocki initiated video production workshops in 15 cities around the world in which participants were to engage with the subject of ‘labour’: paid and unpaid, material and immaterial, traditional or new. The videos could not be longer than two minutes and they had to be taken in a single shot. The camera could be static, panning or travelling but cuts were not allowed. This concept references the Brother Lumière’s famous film Workers Leaving the Factory which was filmed in one continuous take from a fixed camera position.
The result of these workshops, which were organised together with local branches of the Goethe-Institut, are 400 films which show people engaged in all kinds of work, each film taking a different stance, literally and figuratively, towards its subject while also recording the diverse mental attitudes and bodily relation people have to their work.
Facing the challenge of filming something that might be essentially repetitive, continuous and boring, the films also foreground the work of the camera operator and his or her aesthetic decisions. In the multitude and diversity the films form a visual compendium and an archive of labour and cinema in the 21st century that is never boring or repetitive but enhances and simultaneously questions our perception and understanding of work.
All the films can be watched on a dedicated website, at random, or sorted by city, colour or type of work. A selection of 90 films was shown as an installation at the House of World Culture in Berlin from 27 February to 6 April 2015 with an accompanying conference. This exhibition also presented the project ‘Workers Leaving the Factory in 15 Cities’ (2011 – 2014), consisting of contemporary remakes of the famous film by the Lumière Brothers which were shot in 15 cities all over the world. Also included in the exhibition was the installation ‘Workers Leaving the Factory in Eleven Decades’ (2006), which showed scenes of workers leaving the factory throughout the history of cinema, from the Lumière Brothers (1895) to Lars van Trier’s Dancer in the Dark (2000).
‘Labour in a Single Shot’ is a co-production of the Harun Farocki Filmproduktion with the Goethe-Institut.
I Can Quit Whenever I Want
2014
Comedy
Italy
Director: Sydney Sibilia
Writers: Valerio Attanasio, Andrea Garello, Sydney Sibilia
100 Minutes
A university researcher is fired because of the cuts to the university. To earn a living, he decides to produce drugs recruiting his former colleagues, who despite their skills are living at the margins of society.
–IMDb
THE LABOR FILM DATABASE 