China (Director: Jiu-liang Wang) — Yi-Jie, an 11-year-old girl, works alongside her parents in a recycling facility while dreaming of attending school. Kun, the facility’s ambitious foreman, dreams of a better life. Through the eyes and hands of those who handle its refuse, comes an examination of global consumption and culture. International Premiere. THE NEW CLIMATE
Category Archives: Immigrants/Immigration
THE JUDGEMENT (2014)
Dir. Stephan Komandarev/Bulgaria/2014/107 min SATURDAY 24 SEPTEMBER 17:30
The waves of migrants or refugees being smuggled across our borders are now daily news. But how do these people make it to Europe through often hostile and unforgiving terrain? Whilst many refugee stories are told, we know less about the people who actually do the smuggling. This Bulgarian entry for Best Foreign Language Oscar follows Mityo who, having lost his wife, job and the respect of his son, takes up a job smuggling Syrian refugees across the very Bulgarian/Turkish/Greek border he prevented people crossing whilst in the army. A film about the impact of momentous decisions, and the hostile mountain terrain at the heart of an illegal industry.
Trailer:
https://youtu.be/XRCAYsrl37s
Gaucho del Norte (2015)
54 min | Documentary, Adventure, Western
Directors: Andres Caballero, Sofian Khan
In the quiet, bucolic Patagonian countryside in the town of Bahia Murta with 587 inhabitants we meet Eraldo Pacheco, a thoughtful man who has recently arrived at a momentous decision. “Things are worse here than ever,” Eraldo tells his father and family as he announces his plan to move to the United States to fulfill a three-year contract tending sheep almost 6,000 miles away in rural Idaho. In this observational documentary of impressive beauty and painterly cinematic images the imbalance of economic forces is seen in high relief.
With poetic subtlety the film speaks to the economic fragility of these remote and rural communities in South America as well as the precarious and fickle agricultural economy up north. Once in Salt Lake City, Utah, we meet Jhonny Qispe, from Peru, who also made the trek up north and who also left a wife and two children behind.
Peaceful, meditative scenes envelop the viewer – vast desert, steep mountains, winter’s terrain and thousands of sheep belie the angst of the economic woes that cause a separation between a man and his beloved, his elders, his children, and the spiritual majesty of his homeland. Jhonny is also deeply invested in being a provider for his family. But what might seem like a pastoral, nomadic life is a lonely and tough existence.
While Eraldo is up north, he continues to fret about not being in Chile tending to his family, especially his elderly parents. Did he make the right choice?
Champ of the Camp (2013)
Director: Mahmoud Kaabour
75 min | Documentary, Music |
With unprecedented access, this creative documentary paints a complete portrait of life in Dubai’s labor camps, told entirely in the voices of the laborers as we follow their participation in a huge Bollywood singing competition
http://www.champofthecampmovie.com/
Streit’s: Matzo and the American Dream (2015)
http://matzofilm.com/
65 min | Documentary, Family, History | 12 April 2015 (USA)
Director/writer: Michael Levine
On Manhattan’s Lower East Side, in a series of four nondescript brick tenement buildings, sits the Streit’s Matzo factory. In 1925, when Aron Streit opened the factory’s doors, it sat at the heart of the nations largest Jewish immigrant community. Today, in its fifth generation of family ownership, in a rapidly gentrifying Lower East Side, it remains as the last family owned matzo factory in America.
(note: the factory closed in April 2015; workers will have to commute to New Jersey)
Lessons from a University on the Fly (Leçons d’une université volante) (1982)
Belgium
dir. Jean- Pierre and Luc Dardenne
in French with English subtitles
Filmed for television in 1982, this series of intimate portraits of Polish immigrants living in Belgium marks the beginning of the Dardennes’ interest in the lives of immigrants.
Boom and Bust: America’s Journey on the Erie Canal
Directed by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Paul Wagner and co-produced by Steve Zeitlin of CityLore and Erie Canal Museum Curator Daniel Ward, the film tells the story of industrial expansion and decline along the Erie Canal and examines its impact on the lives of workers in steel, grain, textiles and shipping. Wagner’s credits include The Stone Carvers and Windhorse. A meditation on economic cycles and the American Dream. The film surveys the macro-economics of industrial expansion and decline along the Erie Canal, and examines its impact on the lives of workers in steel, grain, textiles and shipping. In the wake of economic collapse, can the people of America’s cities find meaning and worth?
Paul Wagner, Charlottesville, VA: pw@paulwagnerfilms.com
The Seaman (2014)
Filmmaker: Ting-Ging YU
Taiwan | 2014 | Fiction | 18 minutes
Acen’s girlfriend, Yuli, is a caregiver, and she always waits for him to come back; Anan misses his home in Indonesia by viewing the sea. One day, he meets Dora. They fall in love with each other, and Anan feels the love of a girl who comes from his homeland.
2015 Brazilian International Labour Film Festival
Second Class (2013)
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
Ya Wooto (2014)
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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