40m; U.S.
Director: Steve Bognar & Julia Reichert
Synopsis: An intimate look at the final days of a General Motors Plant in Moraine, Ohio, and the lives of the workers affected by its closing.
Category Archives: Manufacturing
The Stockyards: End of an Era
Synopsis: Film discusses the closing of the Chicago Stockyards, black struggles with union, history of work in yards, ethnic backgrounds.
The Trickle Down Theory of Sorrow (2002)
15m; U.S.
Director: Mary Filippo
Synopsis: Veteran experimental filmmaker Mary Filippo tackles issues of work, class and gender roles in this visually captivating and provocative autobiographical piece. At the core of this engaging autobiographical piece is an interview with Filippo’s mother, as she recounts incidents of exploitation and gender discrimination she experienced working in jewelry factories in the 1940’s and 50’s. The filmmaker contrasts her mother’s quiet acquiescence with her own attitudes about social injustices of her culture through a striking montage of images and audio clips—moving the viewer to consider connections between consumerism and global labor practices, motherhood, money and happiness. – http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/pages/c615.shtml
They Don’t Wear Black Tie (Eles Não Usam Black-Tie) [1981]
122m; Brazil
Director: Leon Hirszman
Cast: Gianfrancesco Guarnieri, Fernanda Montenegro and Carlos Alberto Riccelli
Synopsis (NYT): At the beginning of the Brazilian film “They Don’t Wear Black Tie,” a middle-class boy and girl are making plans to live happily ever after. Maria (Bete Mendes) is pregnant by the handsome young Tiao (Carlos Alberto Ricelli), and that helps accelerate their plan to rush into marriage. Everything looks rosy. “They Don’t Wear Black Tie” is an extremely successful politically aware drama about how the bloom falls off the rose . . . The film chronicles the process by which Maria realizes that Tiao is not the man she thought he was. Her understanding of Tiao’s weakness is heightened by the political activity surrounding a local strike, at the factory where Tiao, his father and Maria are all employed. When the labor trouble begins, Tiao manfully wanrs Maria that she’d better stay home, exhibiting just the hind of stubborn sexism this courageous heroine refuses to tolerate. Later on, he violates the most basic tenets of his upbringing by becoming a scab. And Maria declares that her child will be bery, very proud of his grandfather, even if he never has a kind thought about his father at all.
“They Don’t Wear Black Tie” is an outstandingly good film in this year’s New Directors/New Films lineup.
Time Goes By: 57th St. & MacCorkle Ave. North 1921-2007
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.
United Action: Story of the GM Tool & Die Strike 1939 (1940)
33m; U.S.
Director: Michael Martini
We ‘re Not Just Fighting For Our Own Skins (2007)
81m; Germany
Director: Holger Wayman
Synopsis: In May 2005, the Bosch-Siemens workers in Berlin who produce Siemens household appliances were threatened with the closure of their factory and the loss of 600 jobs.
Contact: http://www.videowerkstatt.de/ autofocus@videowerkstatt.de Holger Wayman: howeg@hotmail.de
We Didn’t Want It to Happen This Way (1978)
30m; U.S.
Director: George Lindblade
Synopsis: Shot on film in 1978, this project was commissioned by the Zenith Corporation and the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. It chronicles the effect of the Sioux City Zenith plant closing on the lives of nine people from seven families. The film crew then traveled to Taiwan and Mexico, where the Sioux City jobs relocated. This was the first wave of US manufacturing jobs moving to offshore facilities. 1500 people, mostly women, lost their jobs. The film was intended to encourage Congress to pass antidumping laws that would protect American workers. We Didn’t Want it to Happen This Way was the winner of the 1979 American Film Festival Award. – https://siouxcitygifts.com/store/product_info.php/products_id/48?osCsid=7kdbncntn103lnet2704fo4086
With These Hands: The Story Of An American Furniture Factory (2009)
80m; U.S.
Director: Matthew Barr
Synopsis: In March 2007, unable to compete with cheaper offshore production, Hooker Furniture Company closed its plant in Martinsville, Virginia, after 83 years in operation. “With These Hands” follows the last load of kiln-dried wood down the assembly line as it is cut, honed, and assembled into fine furniture. Along the way, employees at the factory share their perspectives on work, community, and survival in a country devastated by deindustrialization and outsourcing.
Contact: Matthew Barr Associate Professor Department of Broadcasting and Cinema (336) 334-3887 m_barr@uncg.edu
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