RSS

Category Archives: Cities-Urban

The Concrete Revolution (2004)

13 Jun

62m; China

Director: Xiaolu Guo

Synopsis: A look at life in a rapidly developing new China. Workers recruited from villages into Beijing’s construction industry tell their stories of a culture in flux. Their displacement from loved ones, financial desperation, and hopes are set against the backdrop of the city they are daily transforming in preparation for the 2008 Olympics. Prolific young novelist and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo illustrates with reference to her own migration from a provincial fishing village, music, and stories of her own.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Cities-Urban, Construction Trades, Documentary, Migrant workers

 

The Garden (2008)

13 Jun

80m; U.S.

Director: Scott Hamilton Kennedy

Cast: Danny Glover, Daryl Hannah and Antonio Villaraigosa

Synopsis (IMDB): The 14 acre community garden in South Central Los Angeles was the largest of it’s kind in the United States. It was started as a form of healing after the devastating L.A. riots in 1992. Since that time, the South Central Farmers have created a miracle in one of the country’s most blighted neighborhoods. Growing their own food. Feeding their families. Creating a community. But now bulldozers threaten their oasis. The Garden is an unflinching look at the struggle between these urban farmers and the City of Los Angeles and a powerful developer who want to evict them and build warehouses.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Cities-Urban, Documentary, Farm & Food, Politics

 

The Herd (SURU) [1978]

13 Jun

118m; Turkey

Director: Yilmaz Guney

Cast: Tarik Akan, Melike Demirag and Erol Demiröz

Synopsis (IMDB): Because of a local blood feud, a peasant family decides to sell its sheep – a most precious commodity – in far away Ankara. During their long train ride, bribes must be paid to petty officials, sheep are stolen or die in the packed, airless wagons, and the sick wife of one of the family’s sons becomes deathly ill.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Cities-Urban, Drama, Farm & Food

 

The Stockyards: End of an Era

13 Jun

Synopsis: Film discusses the closing of the Chicago Stockyards, black struggles with union, history of work in yards, ethnic backgrounds.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Cities-Urban, Documentary, Manufacturing, Safety & Health, Working Class

 

Tags:

Turning a Corner (2006)

13 Jun

59m; U.S.

Director: Salome Chasnoff

Cast: Joanne Archibald, Brandy Baldwin and Juan Barbieri

Synopsis (IMDB): Turning a Corner tells the stories of people involved in sex work and their efforts to raise public awareness of systemic injustice and promote needed reforms. Created with 15 members of Prostitution Alternatives Round Table (PART), this groundbreaking film recounts their struggle with homelessness, violence, and discrimination, and gives rare insights into the harsh realities of Chicago’s sex trade industry

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Cities-Urban, Documentary, Sex Industry/Sexuality, Working Class

 

Two Aliens (2002)

13 Jun

55m;
Director: Suhi Choi

Suhi Choi received a BA in Korean History from Korea University in Seoul, MFA in TV Production from Brooklyn College in New York. She is a doctoral student of Mass Media and Communication Program, Temple University in Philadelphia. Her documentary, Two Aliens, dealing with conflicts between Korean grocery owners and Mexican workers in New York City, was presented both in the Brooklyn Museum of Art and Anthology Film Archives in Manhattan.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Cities-Urban, Class, Documentary, Immigrants/Immigration

 

Two Acres of Land / Do Bigha Zamin (1953)

13 Jun

131m; India

Director: Bimal Roy

Cast: Balraj Sahni, Nirupa Roy and Rattan Kumar

Synopsis: A small Bengali landowner and his young son are in danger when their two-acre farmland where they live is in danger of being taken over by a local zamindar (feudal lord) for failure to pay for mounting debits. They move to Calcutta where the father tries making a living as a rickshaw puller while his wife joins him but falls ill which threatens everything they have going to try to save their ancestral home.

Contact: Shemaroo Video Pvt. Ltd. (2003) (India) (DVD) Shemaroo House No. 18 Marol Co-operative-Industrial Estate Andheri East, Mumbai 400059 India Phn: +91 222 8529911

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Cities-Urban, Drama, Migrant workers

 

Umbrella (2007)

13 Jun

93m;
Director: Du Haibin
Contact: http://icarusfilms.com/new2008/umb.html
lori@icarusfilms.com

The program of economic reforms initiated in China in 1978 by Deng Xiaoping aimed to finance the modernization of the nation. But what Communist Party leaders called “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” looked suspiciously to many as a return to capitalism. Today, some three decades later, the results of those sweeping economic reforms have become plainly visible in a country increasingly divided between its rural and urban sectors.

Filmed in five different regions of China, UMBRELLA provides a telling look at the vast changes that have taken place in Chinese society, including a massive migration from the countryside to the cities, the rise of a prosperous new class of businesspeople, millions of new college graduates competing for a shrinking number of jobs, and the neglect of China’s largest population group, its rural peasants.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Cities-Urban, Consumerism, Documentary, Global Economy

 

Unbidden Voices (1989)

13 Jun

32m; 

Synopsis: Indian immigrant in Chicago.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Cities-Urban, Immigrants/Immigration

 

Uncle Moses (1932)

13 Jun

88m; U.S.

Director: Sidney M. Goldin, Aubrey Scotto

Cast: Maurice Schwartz, Judith Abarbanel and Mark Schweid

Synopsis (IMDB): “Uncle” Moses is a wealthy garment store owner in the Lower East Side. He lords his wealth and its attendant power over the neighborhood, dispensing noblesse oblige and conducting casual affairs with numerous women. When he falls in love with the beautiful young daughter of one of his employees, he discovers what it is like to be beholden to another person. He convinces her to marry him, but she does so out of financial and social obligation, and Moses’ love remains distressingly unrequited. At the same time, the growing labor movement attacks him for his exploitative employment conditions, and Moses begins to doubt the truth of the American Dream he thought he had achieved.

 
Leave a comment

Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Cities-Urban, Drama, Immigrants/Immigration, Organizing, Textile Industry, Working Class

 
← Older posts
Newer posts →