Arts/Culture | THE LABOR FILM DATABASE

Docs & the World

Barcelona blog devoted to social and environmental documentaries.

“We have just started a series of posts about films that deal with the question of work in capitalism. We think these films can help to build up the working class conscience so sorely needed nowadays. Unless there is a new, global working class consciousness, underprivileged classes (increasingly extended) are doomed to be crushed by the sheer destructive power of capitalism. With this post we begin an overview of documentary and fiction films that can help to build up, through denunciation and example, that conscience and solidarity more needed than ever.”

Joan Sole

ducs06@hotmail.com

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Posted by Labor Film Database on October 5, 2019 in A: New/Just Added, Arts/Culture, Communism/Socialism, Documentary, Working Class

The Acting Class

22 Dec

Stars Christopher Eccleston, Julie Hesmondhalgh, Maxine Peake and Samuel West talking about the barriers to success and how acting in the UK has become dominated by the posh. it’s about working-class actors struggling to get on.

It is by telling stories that a society talks to itself, finds out about itself and engages with the rest of the world. What kind of stories do we tell if only 10% of actors come from working class backgrounds?

https://theactingclass.info/

Director: Mike Wayne
1insidefilm@gmail.com

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Posted by Labor Film Database on December 22, 2018 in Arts/Culture, Documentary, Working Class

The Women Workers’ War

24 Jan

2013
Documentary
Italy
Director: Massimo Ferrari
54 Minutes

The story of longest factory sit-in by women–500 days–led by Rosa Giancola of Latina, and a factory that churns out sweets and thoughts, led by Margherita Dogliani of Carrara. The documentary recounts the story of two women who are very special and react in profound and non-conventional ways to the economic and moral crisis that grips Italy. The documentary won an award at the Workers Unite! Film Festival of New York.

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Posted by jckozlowski on January 24, 2015 in Arts/Culture, Collective Bargaining, Documentary, Farm & Food, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Labor History, Manufacturing, Occupation/Type of Work, Organizing, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts, Themes, Women, Working Class

I Can Quit Whenever I Want

24 Jan

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

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Posted by jckozlowski on January 24, 2015 in Arts/Culture, Class, Comedy, Consumerism, Education, Occupation/Type of Work, Self-Employed/Freelance, Themes, White Collar, Working Class

Tony Benn: Will and Testament

24 Jan

2014
Documentary
England
Director: Skip Kite
Writer: Skip Kite
90 Minutes

In this unique autobiographical feature, Tony Benn – one of the UK’s most influential and charismatic political figures – presents his personal reflections on life, work, love and loss through intimate, confessional interviews, wonderfully illustrated by his personal photographic and film archives. Criss-crossing the UK, he bears witness to major social and political upheavals and events that influenced him during his life and political career.
–Written by Tony Kite

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Posted by jckozlowski on January 24, 2015 in Arts/Culture, Biography, Class, Collective Bargaining, Documentary, Education, Labor History, Philosophy, Politics, Themes, Unemployment-Wages, Working Class

Shadows of Liberty

17 Jul

93 min – Documentary – 8 August 2013 (Germany)
Director: Jean-Philippe Tremblay

Film website

In this documentary, filmmaker Jean-Philippe Tremblay takes a journey through the darker corridors of the US media. Global conglomerates have called the shots for decades, and their overwhelming influence has distorted news journalism and compromised its values. In highly revealing stories, renowned journalists, activists, and academics give insider accounts of a broken media system. Controversial news reports are suppressed, people are censored for speaking out, and lives are shattered as the arena for public expression is turned into a private profit zone. Tracing the story of media manipulation through the years, Shadows of Liberty poses a crucial question: why have we let a handful of powerful corporations write the news?

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Posted by Labor Film Database on July 17, 2014 in Arts/Culture, Big Business/Corporations, Documentary, Entertainment Industry

The Conditions of the Working Class In England

17 Jul

2012 British; 82 min.
Directed by Mike Wayne and Deirdre O’Neill

This film is inspired by Engels’ book written in 1844, The Condition of the Working Class in England. How much has really changed since then?

In 2012 a group of working class people from Manchester and Salford come together to create a theatrical show from scratch based on their own experiences and Engels’ book. They have eight weeks before their first performance. The Condition of the Working Class follows them from the first rehearsal to the first night performance and situates their struggle to get the show on stage in the context of the daily struggles of ordinary people facing economic crisis and austerity politics. The people who came together to do the show turned from a group of strangers, many of whom had never acted before, into The Ragged Collective, in little more than two months.

This film, full of political passion and anger, is a wonderful testament to the creativity, determination and camaraderie of working people that blows the media stereotypes of the working class out of the water.

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Posted by Labor Film Database on July 17, 2014 in Arts/Culture, Class, Communism/Socialism, Documentary, Labor History, Working Class

Tangled Threads

29 Jun

“Tangled Threads” chronicles labor rights activist Kalpona Akter’s organizing efforts in Bangladesh’s garment industry before and after the Rana Plaza building collapse, which claimed the lives of at least 1,138 garment workers. It does so against the backdrop of two very different worlds: New York’s modeling industry, on the one hand, and Bangladesh’s garment industry, on the other. Produced by STZFilms.

Directed by: Sara Ziff

Sara Ziff is a New York-based filmmaker, fashion model, and labor activist. She co-directed and produced the feature documentary “Picture Me” (2009), which shed light on labor issues in the modeling industry, particularly sexual abuse. Currently she serves as co-founder and executive director of the Model Alliance, a nonprofit labor group for models working in the American fashion industry. Ziff first traveled to Bangladesh in 2012, when she began collaborating with the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity (BCWS) and the International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) to try to organize workers across fashion’s supply chain.

https://www.facebook.com/stzfilms

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Posted by andrew765 on June 29, 2014 in Arts/Culture, Big Business/Corporations, Cities-Urban, Class, Consumerism, Documentary, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Retail, Safety & Health, Textile Industry, Women, Working Class

Tags: working conditions

Through the Eye of the Needle: The Art of Esther Nisenthal Krinitz

28 Jun

Esther Nisenthal was 15 in October of 1942 when the Jews of her village in Poland were ordered by Nazis to report to a nearby train station. Esther’s story of survival is extraordinary because of her method of storytelling- stitching and embroidering. It comes to us in a series of 36 large fabric collages, intricately embroidered in vivid color, created more than 40 years after the war. They depict one young girl’s eyewitness account of the war, scenes of tragedy and trauma juxtaposed with the exquisite beauty.

Directed by: Nina Shapiro- Perl

http://artandremembrance.org/our-work/film/

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Posted by andrew765 on June 28, 2014 in Arts/Culture, Documentary

The Real Rosie the Riveter Project

28 Jun

This archive of filmed oral histories was created by filmmakers Anne de Mare, Kirsten Kelly and Elizabeth Hemmerdinger under the guidance of the irreplaceable Dr. Michael Nash. The 48 women represented here provide a complex portrait of Rosie the Riveter, taking the viewer beyond the iconic “We Can Do It” poster girl and deep into the experiences real Rosies from diverse backgrounds, challenging the popular perception of women in American History. The filmmakers were inspired by the extraordinary women of The Real Rosie The Riveter Project to develop this material into an animated documentary project using new media technologies called The Girl With The Rivet Gun.

Directed by: Kirsten Kelly, Anne de Mare

http://dlib.nyu.edu/rosie/node/1029