Chosen by Ai Weiwei as a companion piece to his “Trace” exhibit at the Hirshhorn, is a documentary about workers’ rights in China. Shot over six years, the film depicts labor activists striving to better the lives of the country’s workers — their aims do not go over well, as they are threatened and attacked on a regular basis.
Category Archives: Immigrants/Immigration
GHOSTS
96 min/Broomfi eld/UK/2006
Broomfield’s fictional feature film, Ghosts (2006), is based on interviews and articles gathered by the journalist Hsai-Hung Pai during her investigation into the 2004 Morecambe Bay cockling tragedy. Twenty-three undocumented migrant workers from China, all unfamiliar with the geography, language and customs of the area, were drowned after being caught out by incoming tides on the extensive mud flats of Morcambe Bay. Their deaths are dramatised in Ghosts which, whilst focusing on a single doomed work crew, is the story of workers who, in desperate need to support their families in China, resort to illegal immigration to countries such as the UK where they became part of the significant number of foreign-born precariat under-class workers. Th e cockle gatherers are representative of a signifi cant class of modern slavery, being bound to criminal gang bosses by a debt servitude that leaves them unable to escape their dangerous jobs. Broomfield deftly dramatises the process in which a Chinese worker pays smugglers a significant sum of money, before taking terrible risks (such as being transported by container), in order to enter the British workforce, where they are subsequently crowded into tiny cottages and treated akin to slaves before being sent out to work in conditions and environments that are dangerous and unsupervised.
(London Labour Film festival 2017)
Video
A BETTER LIFE
(Chris Weitz, US 2011, 98 min., 35mm)
Set in contemporary East Los Angeles the film, whose plot partially parallels that of Bicycle Thief, sympathetically depicts experiences of undocumented Mexican immigrants including manual labor, schools, gangs, family, ICE and deportation. Mexican-American actor Demián Bichir received an Oscar nomination for his moving portrayal of a father who risks everything to make una vida mejor for his son.
If You Could Walk In My Shoes (2015)
Directed by: Ricardo E. Causo
Running Time: 27 min
Starring:
Website: N/a
Synopsis: Roberto Marquez is an artisan from Ecuador, who immigrated to the United States over 14 years ago. He has been living and working in New York City as a shoe cobbler, and is an undocumented immigrant. In 2013, Roberto, and his wife Maria, welcomed a baby girl into their family. A first-generation American Citizen. Roberto struggles to support his family, here and abroad. In spite of the odds they are up against, he reflects on his own life, and the future he wants for his family
Who is Dayani Cristal (2013)
Directed by: Marc Silver
Running Time: 1hr 25 min
Starring: N/A
Website: http://whoisdayanicristal.com/
Synopsis: An anonymous body in the Arizona desert sparks the beginning of a real-life human drama. The search for identity leads us back across a continent to seek out the people left behind and the meaning of a mysterious tattoo.
Sacco and Vanzetti (2007)
Directed by: Peter Miller
Running Time: 1 hr 34 min
Starring: N/A
Website: http://www.montereymedia.com/nogodnomaster/
Synopsis: The story of two Italian immigrant radicals who were executed in 1927 offers insights into present-day issues of civil liberties and the rights of immigrants.
Senorita Extraviada (2001)
Directed by: Lourdes Portillo
Running Time: 74 min
Starring: N/A
Website: http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/pages/c579.shtml
Synopsis: SENORITA EXTRAVIADA, MISSING YOUNG WOMAN tells the haunting story of the more than 350 kidnapped, raped and murdered young women of Juárez, Mexico. Visually poetic, yet unflinching in its gaze, this compelling investigation unravels the layers of complicity that have allowed for the brutal murders of women living along the Mexico-U.S. border. In the midst of Juárez’s international mystique and high profile job market, there exists a murky history of grossly underreported human rights abuses and violence against women. The climate of violence and impunity continues to grow, and the murders of women continue to this day. Relying on what Portillo comes to see as the most reliable of sources – the testimonies of the families of the victims –SEÑORITA EXTRAVIADA, MISSING YOUNG WOMAN documents a two-year search for the truth in the underbelly of the new global economy. An Independent Television Service (ITVS) Production.
The Workers Cup (2016)
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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