2013
Documentary
18 Minutes
Vice News
The effort to protect the privatization of Gezi Park in Istanbul touched off one of the biggest protests and demonstrations in Turkey. This film shows how the people tried to protect the park from developers and property speculators who the AKP Prime Minister Erdogan represents.
2013
Documentary
Director: Yonetmen
22 Minutes
The families of those immigrated for various reasons live in the four edge districts of Ankara which are located in the boundaries of Çankaya. The families who have lived for years in this region are exposed to an enforced immigration for urban transformation. The movie expresses the urban transformation and immigration subjects through the viewpoint of the children of those families.
2011
Drama
Director: Tony Kaye
Writer: Carl Lund
A strong cast and good acting punctuate this drama about well-worn themes in contemporary cinema and educational discourse—failed public schools and the teachers allegedly indifferent to the pervasive, seemingly intractable social problems in them. Adrien Brody plays a substitute teacher who, in his one-month stint in a long-suffering public school, encounters teachers barely hanging on to their jobs and vocational motivation, and teenage students struggling with identity problems, abuse, and serious adult dilemmas such as prostitution. Hard-hitting indictment of not just the problems afflicting US public education but also some of the remedies advanced to solve them.
2013
Documentary
Director: Vicki Vasilopoulos
96 Minutes
Men of the Cloth is an inspiring portrait of Nino Corvato, Checchino Fonticoli and Joe Centofanti, three Italian master tailors who confront the decline of the apprentice system as they navigate their challenging roles in the twilight of their career. The film unravels the mystery of their artistry and reveals how their passionate devotion to their Old World craft is akin to a religion.
–Written by Vicki Vasilopoulos
2014
102 min
Biography
Director: Diego Luna
Writers: Keir Pearson (screenplay), Timothy J. Sexton
Stars: Michael Peña, America Ferrera, Rosario Dawson
The film follows Chávez’s efforts to organize 50,000 farm workers in California, some of whom were braceros—temporary workers from Mexico permitted to live and work in the United States in agriculture, and required to return to Mexico if they stopped working. Working conditions are very poor for the braceros, who also suffer from racism and brutality at the hands of the employers and local Californians. To help the workers, César Chávez (Michael Peña) forms a labor union known as the United Farm Workers (UFW). Chávez’s efforts are opposed, sometimes violently, by the owners of the large industrial farms where the braceros work. The film touches on several major nonviolent campaigns by the UFW: the Delano grape strike, the Salad Bowl strike, and the 1975 Modesto march.
2013
France (in English)
100m
Directors: Gabriella Kessler, Jean-Loïc Portron
Writer: Jean-Loïc Portron
Braddock, Pennsylvania has been the home to key events that have greatly shaped American history. Today, it is struggling to reinvent itself and stay relevant.
In its own way, through immigration, industrialization, the rise of trade unionism and its destiny in question, Braddock tells a story of America: a rebellious, combatant America inhabited by men and women who refuse to accept the violence inflicted upon them. “Resist much, obey little,” Walt Whitman urged his fellow citizens; and indeed his words could be the motto of this film. The Monongahela Valley has been heavily stricken by the steel crisis and the shutdowns of the mills in the 80’s. It is probably easier to find more enchanting places in the world, but if many don’t imagine leaving the valley, it is because they know that this tiny parcel of land bears the traces, buried in its soil and in their memories, of events that helped build the history of their nation. This same awareness leads them to believe that such a special place might one day help map out a future for the United States. http://program33.com/braddock-america/
10/30/2014 NYT review: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/31/movies/braddock-america-the-story-of-a-rust-belt-struggle.html?_r=0
Directed and Edited by Nickos Ventouras
Original Score by Manos Ventouras
Associate Producer Menelaos Tzafalias
Louis Tikas song by Frank Manning (Best Folk Song, 2002).
website: http://www.palikari.org/
Summary
Palikari – Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre deals with labor relations in early 20th century America, as told through the story of Greek migrant and trade union activist Louis Tikas. 2014 marks the centenary of his brutal killing during what acclaimed historian Howard Zinn called the “culminating act of perhaps the most violent struggle between corporate power and laboring men in American history”. Director Nikos Ventouras and producer Lamprini Thoma chart the story of the great 1913-1914 coalminers’ strike and Louis Tikas’s murder, as it survives in oral and family traditions, as well as in official history. They interview historians and artists, some of them direct descendants of those striking miners. Labor movement emblem Mother Jones and industrialist John D. Rockefeller, Jr. also make cameo appearances in this palimpsest of memory, struggle and deliverance. Tikas’s story can but reverberate in our time, in view of what is happening with the rights of workers and immigrants around the world.
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