Directed by Tom Lietz
1 hr, 37m
website: http://www.secondshiftfilm.com/
When GM prepared to pull out of Lansing, a team of government, business, labor and other community leaders convinced the auto giant to invest over a billion dollars instead. This documentary tells the story of successful regional collaboration to create the “second shift” for a community in crisis.
93 min – Documentary – 8 August 2013 (Germany)
Director: Jean-Philippe Tremblay
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?
(55 min.) 2013, Colombia
With tactics ranging from hunger strikes with lips stitched shut to a nearly 1,000-day sit-in at the U.S. Embassy, Colombian workers are putting the world’s attention on General Motors’ treatment of its workers. This film tells the incredible story of an association of injured workers who have taken on one of the most powerful corporations in the world, and have won victories they never thought were possible. The Obama administration pushed the US Colombian trade agreement with the argument that it would protect the workers of Colombia from assassinations and repression because of labor protections. Since the agreement was passed by the Congress and signed by President Obama the repression continues and US corporations like GM and Coca-Cola continue to injure and terrorize Colombian workers.
Injured workers from Asotrecol have also come to the United States to the headquarters of General Motors to demand justice and have not received justice. The UAW which owned shares in General Motors have also been silent about the treatment of the Colombian GM workers and the struggle continues.
“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
When Scottish artist, Jan Nimmo, travels to Ecuador, the world’s largest exporter of bananas, to gather workers’ testimonies, she observes the formation of the first trade unions in the banana sector for 30 years. The Los Alamos banana workers decide to go on strike for the most basic of rights. Alvaro Noboa, Ecuador’s richest man owns the plantation’s owner, Bonita Brands, and Noboa doesn’t like unions. Bonita is the world’s fourth largest banana company yet the workers earn a pittance, are exposed to a cocktail of toxic agrochemicals and their living conditions are appalling. Bonita is a powerful eyewitness account of what happens to workers who dare to stand up against a powerful oligarch.
Directed by: Jan Nimmo
http://www.jannimmo.com/Bonita.html
Looks at the “Take Back the Land” and Occupy Wall Street movements as they began to respond to the foreclosure crisis. The film follows Leonard Spears, a man fighting to keep his home after a foreclosure has passed and an eviction notice has been filed. We meet activists who are willing to put themselves on the line and take direct action to keep people like Leonard in their homes, and to even move homeless families into bank-owned homes that are sitting empty from previous foreclosures.
Directed by: Shane Burley
An Ontario PC leader is championing U.S.-style labor laws designed to weaken unions, but similar laws in the U.S. have driven down wages and kicked increasing numbers of people out of the middle class. In this documentary, veteran journalist Bill Gillespie heads south (to the US) to find out the real impact of what the conservatives are planning for working people in Ontario.
Directed & written by Bill Gillespie; (19 min ) 2013 Canada
‘Overpass Light Brigade’ is a short film that tells the story behind Wisconsin’s Holders of the Lights using innovative time-lapse photography and interviews with founding members and other activists. The film showcases OLB’s simple, beautiful approach to performance art and creating “the people’s bandwidth,” that beckons any who want to creatively join public discourse and voice concerns an elitist political system clamors to quiet.
Directed by: Dusan Harminc, Matt Mullins
Jacob Kornbluth, 2013, 89 min
Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich looks to raise awareness of the country’s widening economic gap.
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