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Category Archives: Class

Strumpet City (1980)

07 May

360m; Ireland

Cast: Frank Grimes, David Kelly, Angela Harding, Peter O’Toole

Synopsis (IMDB): Covering the years between 1907 and 1914, Strumpet City follows several characters through the nightmare years of the “Dublin Lockout,” when the Catholic Church sided with the industrialists to smash Irish labor’s first substantive steps towards unionizing. Using the real-life labor organizer Jim Larkin (Peter O’Toole) as the dramatic lynchpin for the various stories, Strumpet City juggles several storylines to give an overall view of the terrible poverty and misery that afflicted the working poor of Dublin. The central story revolves around Mary (Angela Harding), a young domestic who comes to work for the wealthy, oblivious Bradshaws (Edward Byrne and Daphne Carroll). Once Mary meets handsome, kind foundry worker “Fitz” Fitzpatrick (Bryan Murray), she immediately falls in love, and the couple make plans to save enough money to eventually marry. Mary, distressed at the way the Bradshaws shuttle off their devoted housekeeper Miss Gilchrist (Mairin D. O’Sullivan) to the poor house when she can no longer work, decides to leave the insensitive Bradshaw household and marry Fitz.

–http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/26709/strumpet-city/

 
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Posted by on May 7, 2012 in Class, Collective Bargaining, Drama, Organizing, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

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The Price of Sugar (2006)

26 Apr

90m; U.S.

Director: Bill Haney

Synopsis (IMDB): On the Caribbean island of the Dominican Republic, tourists flock to pristine beaches, with little knowledge that a few miles away thousands of dispossessed Haitians are under armed guard on plantations harvesting sugarcane, most of which ends up in US kitchens. Cutting cane by machete, they work 14 hour days, 7 days a week, frequently without access to decent housing, electricity, clean water, education, healthcare or adequate nutrition. The Price of Sugar follows a charismatic Spanish priest, Father Christopher Hartley, as he organizes some of this hemisphere’s poorest people, challenging the powerful interests profiting from their work. This film raises key questions about where the products we consume originate, at what human cost they are produced and ultimately, where our responsibility lies.

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Class, Documentary, Farm & Food, Global Economy, Organizing

 

Profit & Nothing But! Or Impolite Thoughts on the Class Struggle (2001)

26 Apr

52m

Diector: Raoul Peck

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Class, Documentary

 

Ralph Fasanella: Painter Of Working Class People (2007)

26 Apr

4m
Director: John Lett
GoIAM.org – Whether it’s a strike or factory floor, former union organizer Ralph Fasanella devoted his life to painting working men and women. The man who is considered America’s best self taught artist, would eventually complete hundreds of pieces of work dedicated to jobs and justice.
Available online

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Cities-Urban, Class, Documentary, Organizing, Streaming Online (Youtube, Vimeo), Working Class

 

Red Sorghum (1987)

26 Apr

91m; China

Director: Yimou Zhang

Cast: Li Gong, Wen Jiang and Rujun Ten

Synopsis (IMDB): In 1930s China a young woman is sent by her father to marry the leprous owner of a winery. In the nearby red sorghum fields she falls for one of his servants. When the master dies she finds herself inheriting the isolated business

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Class, Drama, Farm & Food, Women

 

Remember Owens-Illinois 1921-2007 (Time Goes By, 57th St. & Mac Corkle Ave. North, 1921-2007)

26 Apr

2007 35 mins. Joe Hodges

A second glass plant existed right across the street from LOF on MacCorkle Ave. SE in the Kanawha City section of Charleston. This plant became the largest producer of glass bottles in the world by the 1930s. In 1917, just one year after the LOF plant was founded, the Owens-Illinois Company began manufacturing fruit jars, jars for industrial products, and after Prohibition ended, beer bottles. This film tells the story of WV native son Michael Joseph Owens, the inventor of the bottle-making machine that revolutionized the glass industry worldwide. Photos of workers are shown, and videotape-showing reunions are included. The plant closed in 1963. Many workers at this plant would walk across the street and work at the LOF plant when things were slow.

Access: Joseph D. Hodges, 5426 Lancaster Ave. SE, Charleston, WV 25304, 925-1819, joe1819@suddenlink.net or David Radford, 2950 Pine St., Belle, WV, 595-1090. The WV State Archives has copies of both films LOF and OI films, made available to reseachers. Copies of both LOF and OI glass factory films should be available from WVLC and KCPL in summer 2009.

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Automation, Class, Documentary, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Technology

 

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The Roof (Il Tetto) (1956)

26 Apr

Director: Vittorio De Sica
Italy; 91m

Natale, an apprentice bricklayer, and Luisa, who has no skill, marry and try to live with Natale’s parents and other relatives in one apartment, what might happen in the poorest classes in Rome about 1950. After a quarrel Natale and Luisa precipitately leave without a place to live. The remainder of the film is devoted to their finding housing. The solution is building a one room brick dwelling as a squat on unused railway land on the outskirts of Rome. As this is illegal Natale gets his workmates to assist him during the night. Provided a dwelling has a door and a roof the householder cannot be evicted. At dawn when the police arrive to remove them the dwelling is complete except for part of the roof, but a humane policeman looks the other way. We suppose that Natale and Luisa, now pregnant, live happily ever after. (Wikipedia)

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Cities-Urban, Class, Construction Trades, Drama, Working Class

 

Love on the Dole (1941)

20 Apr

Director: John BaxterLoveOnTheDole
Writers: Walter Greenwood (novel), Ronald Gow (play), and 3 more credits 

Stars: Deborah Kerr, Clifford Evans and George Carney

During the depression in England, a young woman from Lancashire is forced to become a rich bookmaker’s mistress just to help the rest of her family who are unemployed.

Available on YouTube

 
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Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Class, Drama, Streaming Online (Youtube, Vimeo), Unemployment-Wages, Working Class

 

Mississippi Chicken (2007)

20 Apr

82m; U.S.

Director: John Fiege

Synopsis: Questions of race, workers’ rights and exploitation form the crux of this intriguing documentary about Latin American immigrants living in rural Mississippi, where poultry plants promise jobs but little else.

Contact: http://www.mississippichicken.com/contact.asp

 
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Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Class, Documentary, Immigrants/Immigration, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Migrant workers, Safety & Health, Working Class

 

Mittal’s Gain, Workers’ Pain (2009)

20 Apr

8m; Belguim

Synopsis: The film is part of a series about industrial actions taken by the European Metalworkers’ Federation with the aim to highlight the difficult state the metalworking industry is in and to show that workers are stronger together. The EMF uses it with affiliates and work council members to strengthen moral and to show that the struggle is not about only one plant but that the fight concerns all workers at ArcelorMittal around the globe.

 
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Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Class, Collective Bargaining, Documentary, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing

 
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