RSS

Category Archives: Blacks

Burn! (1969)

132m; Italy

Director: Gillo Pontecorvo

Cast: Marlon Brando, Evaristo Márquez and Norman Hill

Synopsis: Pontecorvo’s follow-up to The Battle of Algiers tells a story of imperial intrigue on a fictional Portuguese “sugar and slaves” colony in the Caribbean in the 1840s. Marlon Brando plays a British agent who helps convince Jose Dolores, one of the island’s many African slaves, to lead a revolt – which temporarily aligns with the local elite and wins independence. However, the African slaves’ economic and social position remains virtually the same under the new regime. Years later, Brando’s character must return as the Africans are now revolting against their new masters. Pontecorvo uses the story as a metaphor less for any one particular historical incident, but as a left-wing commentary on the full history of slavery, empire, neo-colonialism and resistance for the past two centuries.

Opening Title

Full Film (in 12 Parts)

Leave a comment

Posted by Labor Film Database on January 25, 2012 in A: Highly Recommended Labor Films, Blacks, Drama, Organizing, Slavery, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts, Working Class

Black Girl (La Noire de…) (1965)

25 Jan

60M; Senegal

Director: Ousmane Sembene

Cast: Mbissine Thérèse Diop, Anne-Marie Jelinek and Robert Fontaine

Synopsis (IMDB): A Senegalese woman is eager to find a better life abroad. She takes a job as a governess for a French family, but finds her duties reduced to those of a maid after the family moves from Dakar to the south of France. In her new country, the woman is constantly made aware of her race and mistreated by her employers. Her hope for better times turns to disillusionment and she falls into isolation and despair. The harsh treatment leads her to consider suicide the only way out.

Full Film

Leave a comment

Posted by Labor Film Database on January 25, 2012 in A: Highly Recommended Labor Films, Available Online, Blacks, Drama, Immigrants/Immigration, Streaming Online (Youtube, Vimeo), Women

A. Philip Randolph: For Jobs and Freedom (1996)

24 Jan

86m; U.S.

The Attorney General of the United States called A. Philip Randolph “the most dangerous Negro in America.” He forced President Roosevelt to integrate the armed forces, won the first-ever contract for a Black union when he organized the Pullman porters and was the moving force behind the historic 1963 March on Washington.

Leave a comment

Posted by iwwggrandson on January 24, 2012 in Blacks, Documentary, Organizing, Service Workers, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts, Transportation

Tags: DCLFF LIBRARY

A Raisin in the Sun (1961)

24 Jan

128m; U.S.

Director: Daniel Petrie

Cast: Sidney Poitier, Claudia McNeil , Ruby Dee

Synopsis (IMDB): A substantial insurance payment could mean either financial salvation or personal ruin for a poor black family.

Leave a comment

Posted by iwwggrandson on January 24, 2012 in Blacks, Drama, Working Class

Between a Rock and a Hard Place (1981)

24 Jan

59m; U.S.

Director: Ken Fink

Synopsis: New Yorker filmmaker Ken Fink made this film after interviewing hundreds of coal miners. He eventually interviewed members of three different generations – a retired miner, a black middle-aged miner, and a miner who tried to leave the mountains only to return. They give their attitudes toward their profession, often reflecting the deep frustrations involved with the industry. This film is partially funded by the Humanities Foundation of West Virginia and has been shown on WSWP TV. It was also shown at film festivals throughout the United States. A recent book, “Glass Castles” talks about these filmmakers coming to Welch, the county seat of McDowell County.

Contact: WVLC and Icarus Films

Leave a comment

Posted by iwwggrandson on January 24, 2012 in Blacks, Documentary, Working Class

Tags: Mining

Bless Their Little Hearts (1984)

23 Jan

80m; U.S.

Director: Billy Woodberry

Cast: Nate Hardman, Kaycee Moore and Angela Burnett

Synopsis: Life in Watts.

Leave a comment

Posted by iwwggrandson on January 23, 2012 in Blacks, Drama

Black Orpheus (1959)

23 Jan

107m; Brazil

Director: Marcel Camus

Cast: Breno Mello, Marpessa Dawn and Lourdes de Oliveira

Synopsis: A retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, set during the time of the Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro.

Leave a comment

Posted by iwwggrandson on January 23, 2012 in Blacks, Drama, Working Class

Matewan (1987)

14 Jan

135m; U.S.
Director: John Sayles
Cast: Chris Cooper, James Earl Jones, Mary McDonnell, David Strathairn

Synopsis: John Sayles, one of the leading independent directors in the world, came to WV in 1983 to film one of the most famous confrontations between laborer and owners in the town of Matewan, Mingo County, WV, 1920. It took him four years to finally finish the film, directing “Brother from another Planet” during that time period. Coal miners, struggling to form a union, are up against company operators and Baldwin-Felts agents. Black and Italian miners, brought in by the company to break the strike, are caught between the two forces. Union activist and ex-Wobbly Joe Kenehan (Chris Cooper), sent to help organize the union, determines to bring the local, black, and Italian groups together. Drawn from an actual incident; the characters of Sheriff Sid Hatfield (David Strathairn), Mayor Cabell Testerman (Josh Mostel), C. E. Lively (Bob Gunton) , and Few Clothes Johnson were based on real people. James Earl Jones plays Few Clothes Johnson, a black coal miner who joins the union to stop massive abuses. The execution of Sheriff Hatfield on the steps of the McDowell County Courthouse steps by Baldwin-Felts agents led to the 1921 Battle of Blair Mountain, the largest armed labor conflict in American history. Music by WV native Hazel Dickens. Nominated for an Oscar by Haskell Wexler for best cinematography. Filmed in Thurmond and the New River Gorge, WV.

Trailer

Key Clip

In this scene, Chris Cooper’s organizer character gives an impassioned speech about the meaning of being in a union, with an explicit attack on racism and other forces that would divide workers.

Leave a comment

Posted by Metro Council on January 14, 2012 in A: Highly Recommended Labor Films, Blacks, Drama, Labor History, Organizing, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts, Women, Working Class

Tags: Mining

10,000 Black Men Named George (2002)

25 Oct

95m; US
Director: Robert Townsend
Starring: André Braugher, Charles S. Dutton & Mario Van Peebles
Dramatic film inspired by the life of black organizer, A. Philip Randolph (Braugher), an early champion of the Civil Rights movement. From1925 to 1937, Randolph led the railway car porters’ bruising battle against the notoriously anti-union Pullman Company, one of the most powerful companies in the United States in the 1920’s. His efforts helped create the first black union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Charles S. Dutton portrays Webster, the union’s Chicago-based organizer.Mario Van Peebles plays Ashley Totten, one of the founding members of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.Philip Randolph (Braugher) was an ardent socialist and publisher of a struggling radical Harlem magazine called “The Messenger.” Because traditional trade unions such as the American Federation of Labor (AFL)had not yet invited the black working-class to join in the 1920’s, the black labor movement was initiated by the railway porters who worked on the sleeping cars for the Pullman company. Although they were proud of their profession, the porters were often humiliated and dismissed by the upper-class white passengers. They were grossly underpaid. In the eyes of the Pullman Company and many of their patrons alike, the porters were not seen as individuals and were simply referred to “George” after the owner of the railway company.
Originally broadcast on Showtime on February 24, 2002