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Category Archives: Class

The Issue of Mr. O’Dell

22 Dec

Documentary about the life and work of Jack O’Dell, veteran African-American civil rights activist.

Directed and produced by Rami Katz

New Film Reveals Life of Civil Rights Activist Jack O’Dell

Awards:
President’s Award, Full Frame Documentary Film Festival ’18
Best International Short: Baltimore International Black Film Festival ’18
Honourable Mention, Documentary Short: Roxbury International Film Festival ’18

Festivals:
Full Frame Documentary Film Festival ’18
Freep Film Festival ’18
DOXA Documentary Film Festival ’18
Roxbury International Film Festival ’18
Rhode Island International Film Festival ’18
Montreal International Black Film Festival ’18
Baltimore International Black Film Festival ’18
St. Louis International Film Festival ’18
North Carolina Black Film Festival ’18

Educational Distributor (US): Cinema Guild
store.cinemaguild.com/nontheatrical/product/2581.html

“[A] personal and humanizing portrait” – Pat Mullen, POV Magazine
povmagazine.com/articles/view/review-the-issue-of-mr.-odell

“As a viewer, I was left wanting more.” – Esther Sun, Discorder Magazine
citr.ca/discorder/may-2018/doxa-2018-the-issue-of-mr-odell/

“O’Dell shares his insightful outlook on past and present race relations in the United States, augmented beautifully with the stark and poignant imagery” – Danielle Piper, The Georgia Straight
straight.com/movies/1069136/doxa-2018-review-issue-mr-odell

“Filmmaker Rami Katz combines archival material with beautifully shot footage of O’Dell in conversation to weave the story of a man who has fought his whole life for justice.” – Ljudmila Petrovic, Sad Mag
sadmag.ca/blog/2018/4/24/preview-belinda-and-the-issue-of-mr-odell-at-doxa

Facebook page: facebook.com/theissueofmrodell

Website: ramihkatz.com/theissueofmrodell

 
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Posted by on December 22, 2018 in Blacks, Class, Collective Bargaining, Communism/Socialism, Discrimination: Racism, Sexism, etc, Documentary, Organizing, Working Class

 

Nae Passaran

22 Dec

| Documentary, Animation, History | 4 March 2018 (UK)

Director:  Felipe Bustos Sierra
Writer: Felipe Bustos Sierra
Stars: Bob Fulton, Stuart Barrie, John Keenan |

In a Scottish town in 1974, factory workers refuse to carry out repairs on warplane engines in an act of solidarity against the violent military coup in Chile. Four years pass before the engines, left to rust in factory yard, mysteriously disappear in the middle of the night.

website

 
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Posted by on December 22, 2018 in Class, Documentary, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

WILD MOUSE [WILDE MAUS]

07 Mar

A music critic in midlife crisis seeks revenge on the boss who fired him in this satirical seriocomedy, the directorial debut of actor Josef Hader (THE BONEMAN, STEFAN ZWEIG: FAREWELL TO EUROPE). Unwilling to come clean about his termination, Georg (Hader) pretends to go to work each day, but instead hangs out in Vienna’s Prater amusement park, where he befriends ride operator Erich (Georg Friedrich), previously his childhood tormentor. Georg becomes increasingly attracted to Erich’s Romanian girlfriend Nicoletta (Crina Semciuc), more alienated from his therapist wife, Johanna (Pia Hierzegger) and more aggressive in his stealth harassment of his ex-boss (Jörg Hartmann). Official Selection, 2017 Berlin Film Festival. DIR/SCR Josef Hader; PROD Veit Heiduschka, Michael Katz. Austria/Germany, 2017, color, 103 min. In German and Italian with English subtitles. NOT RATED
Run Time: 103 Minutes
Genre: Dark comedy

 
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Posted by on March 7, 2018 in Cities-Urban, Class, Comedy, Communications, Drama, Philosophy, White Collar

 

The Workers Cup (2016)

18 Dec

United Kingdom (Director: Adam Sobel) — Inside Qatar’s labor camps, African and Asian migrant workers building the facilities of the 2022 World Cup compete in a football tournament of their own. World Premiere. DAY ONE

 
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Posted by on December 18, 2016 in Blacks, Class, Documentary, Global Economy, Immigrants/Immigration, Migrant workers

 

Evelyn Williams

06 Dec

Directed by Anne Lewis, USA, Appalshop,1995 (28 minutes)
https://store.appalshop.org/shop/appalshop-films/evelyn-williams/

Evelyn Williams is a portrait of a woman who is many things: a coal miner’s daughter and wife; a domestic worker and mother of nine; a college student in her 50s and community organizer; an Appalachian African American. Above all, she is a woman whose awareness of class and race oppression has led her to a lifetime of activism. Now in her 80s, she is battling to save her land in eastern Kentucky from destruction by a large oil and gas firm.
With humor, eloquence, and at times anger, Evelyn tells her story. Her family came to eastern Kentucky in 1922 when she was six years old. She remembers the Klan burning a cross on the mountain and describes the sense of powerlessness that followed a lynching for which the murderers were never arrested. She married a coal miner and later moved to West Virginia where her daughters were able to attend college.While her husband worked in the mines and helped organize the union, she cleaned the homes of coal company bosses. When the mines mechanized and laid off workers, the family moved to Brooklyn, N.Y. where Evelyn studied at the New School for Social Research and became active in efforts to improve her community. Her commitment to fight for justice and equality was deepened when her son was killed in Vietnam and the U.S. military misinformed and mistreated the family. Following retirement in the early 70′s, Evelyn and her husband returned to a piece of family land in Kentucky. Most recently, she has been a leader of a grassroots effort by Kentuckians for the Commonwealth to end oil and gas company use of the broadform deed to drill on surface owners’ land without their permission. In explaining her determination to preserve her land, she recalls her grandfather, an ex-slave, who said, “Take care of the land. Take care of the land. As long as you have land, you have a belonging.” The program portrays a fascinating and dynamic personality whose keen sense of communal and family history influences her determination. Through her story, Evelyn makes important connections between civil rights, women’s rights, and environmental concerns.

 
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Posted by on December 6, 2015 in Class, Documentary, Environment, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Women, Working Class

 

Resistencia: The Fight for the Aguan Valley

06 Dec

Director: Jesse Freeston
Writers: Diego Briceño-Orduz (story), Jesse Freeston
me@jessefreeston.com
http://resistenciathefilm.com/

In 2009, the first coup d’etat in a generation in Central America overthrows the elected president of Honduras. A nation-wide movement, known simply as The Resistance, rises in opposition. Resistencia: The Fight for the Aguan Valley centers on the most daring wing of the movement, the farmers of the Aguan. Not satisfied with just marching and blocking highways, 2000 landless families take possession of the palm oil plantations of Miguel Facusse, the country’s largest landowner and a key player in the coup. The camera follows three farmers over four years as they build their new communities on occupied land, in the face of the regime’s violent response, while waiting for the elections The Resistance hopes will restore the national democratic project.

 
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Posted by on December 6, 2015 in Class, Documentary, Farm & Food, Organizing, Politics, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

Sunder Nagri (Beautiful City) (2003)

11 Nov

Director: Rahul Roy
English (subtitled), 78 min, 2003, India
http://magiclanternmovies.in/film/city-beautiful

Sunder Nagri (Beautiful City) is a small working class colony on the margins of India’s capital city, Delhi. Most families residing here come from a community of weavers. The last ten years have seen a gradual disintegration of the handloom tradition of this community under the globalisation regime. The families have to cope with change as well as reinvent themselves to eke out a living.

Radha and Bal Krishan are at a critical point in their relationship. Bal Krishan is underemployed and constantly cheated. They are in disagreement about Radha going out to work. However, through all their ups and downs they retain the ability to laugh.Shakuntla and Hira Lal hardly communicate. They live under one roof with their children but are locked in their own sense of personal tragedies.

Producer: Rahul Roy
Creative Crew
Camera: Rahul Roy
Editing: Reena Mohan
Sound: Asheesh Pandya

Rahul is a noted documentary filmmaker who has widely worked on the issues of labor and gender in India. His film The City Beautiful masterfully depicts the life of two families in an Indian working-class colony, focussing on the decline of traditional handloom industry because of globalization. His recent work The Factory (2015) is about the struggle of Maruti automobile workers in New Delhi. For more than two years, 147 workers from the Maruti Suzuki plant were kept behind bars without bail or any charge sheet being presented to the defence counsel. Rahul has followed their crisis and struggle from 2013 to 2015. Read more about the film in this Indian Express piece.

Director contact info: rahulroy63@gmail.com

 
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Posted by on November 11, 2015 in Class, Documentary, Global Economy, Manufacturing, Technology, Textile Industry, Women, Working Class

 

The Divide (2015)

11 Nov

Director: Katharine Round
Running time: 75min
Country: UK
Year: 2015

WEBSITE

Inspired by best-selling book The Spirit Level, Katharine Round’s film highlights the widening gulf between rich and poor. Exploring the reasons behind the ever-increasing wealth gap, its impact, and how inequality might even spell trouble for the rich, The Divide is a timely and prescient piece of globetrotting documentary cinema; both a think piece and a powerful warning.

 

 
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Posted by on November 11, 2015 in Big Business/Corporations, Class, Documentary, Global Economy

 

Second Class (2013)

11 Nov

Filmmakers: Marta Dauliute and Elisabeth Marjanovic ́ Cronvall

Sweden/Lithuania | 2013 | Documentary | 60 minutes

“Do you feel cheaper?” We are filming Lithuanian migrant working men in Sweden. They do not want to be on camera, they do not want to participate in creating one more media image for guilt and pity. They film us. We empty a bottle of moonshine, we dance on their porch. They might let us film them tomorrow.

Through sincere and frustrating negotiation to get access to film the migrant workers, Second Class becomes a discussion about class, the value of work and human. While showing the filming process film raises questions about power relations in film industry itself.
2015 Brazilian International Labour Film Festival

 
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Posted by on November 11, 2015 in Class, Documentary, Global Economy, Immigrants/Immigration, Migrant workers, Philosophy

 

Ya Wooto (2014)

11 Nov

Filmmaker: Jenny Cartwright

Canada/Burkina Faso | 2014 | Documentary | 68 minutes

From his village to the big city, Sylvain is trying to make it in Ouagadougou, the capital city of Burkina Faso, one of the world’s five poorest countries. There, he found a job as a bar manager at Le coin des Amis, a “buvette” owned by Hortense, a policewoman trying to make ends meet. Work is home for Sylvain: he works seven days a week and sleeps in the backroom. He has only one thing in mind: saving up enough money to get his driver’s license. If he succeeds, he could drive a merchandise truck, a job that would allow him to find a wife and start a family. In Burkina Faso, you are not really an adult until you are married. That is why he saves 100% of the 20$ he makes every month. In a year’s time he will have saved up enough cash to start his lessons.
2015 Brazilian International Labour Film Festival

 
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Posted by on November 11, 2015 in Cities-Urban, Class, Documentary, Immigrants/Immigration, Migrant workers

 
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