27m; U.S.
Director: Marc Siegel
Synopsis: Story of 5,000 steelworkers who lost their jobs when Lykes Corporation closed the Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company. The plant reopened under worker-community ownership.
Category Archives: Organizing
Discounted Lives (1995)
30m
Director: Will Durst
Synopsis (WordCat): Discusses the difficulties faced by K-Mart warehouse employees during their attempts to organize unions at the Manteno, Illinois and Greensboro, N.C. locations.
Do It! (1976)
9m; U.S.
Director: Maurer, Fleisher, and Zon
Synopsis: Educational still film with voice-over narration explains why and how to organize a COPE within a union.
Doing the Right Thing
Synopsis: How the Worker’s Party government in Porto Alegre, Brazil has transformed the city into a model of participatory development.
Earl Robinson: Ballad of an American (1994)
60m; U.S.
Director: Bette Jean Bullert
Synopsis: This portrait aired on several major public television stations in the late 1990s. It captures the life and music of the composer of “Joe Hill,” “Black and White,” “Ballad for Americans” and other songs that convey the hopeful, progressive spirit of his generation. Rich in archival footage, this documentary includes performances of Robinson’s songs by Joan Baez, Frank Sinatra, Paul Robeson, Josh White, Three Dog Night, Peter, Paul & Mary, and of course, Earl himself. Judy Collins narrates.
El Norte (1983)
141m; U.S.
Director: Gregory Nava
Cast: Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez, David Villalpando and Ernesto Gómez Cruz
Synopsis: Mayan Indian peasants, tired of being thought of as nothing more than “brazos fuertes” (“strong arms”, i.e., manual laborers) and organizing in an effort to improve their lot in life, are discovered by the Guatemalan army. After the army destroys their village and family, a brother and sister, teenagers who just barely escaped the massacre, decide they must flee to “El Norte” (“the North”, i.e., the USA). After receiving clandestine help from friends and humorous advice from a veteran immigrant on strategies for traveling through Mexico, they make their way by truck, bus and other means to Los Angeles, where they try to make a new life as young, uneducated, and undocumented immigrants.
The Emerging Woman (1974)
40m; U.S.
Director: The Women’s Film Project
Synopsis: Uses film clips, old photographs, and newsreel footage to trace women’s struggle to attain equal rights in education, employment, politics and in the courts.
The End of St. Petersburg (1927)
80m; U.S.S.R.
Director: Vsevolod Pudovkin, Mikhail Doller
Cast: Vera Baranovskaya, Aleksandr Chistyakov and Ivan Chuvelyov
Synopsis: A peasant comes to St. Petersburg to find work. He unwittingly helps in the arrest of an old village friend who is now a labor leader. The unemployed peasant is also arrested and sent to fight in World War I. After three years, he returns ready for revolution.
An Equal Opportunity (1982)
13m; U.S.
Director: Caroline Leaf
Synopsis (IMDB): This open-ended drama is designed to trigger discussion on the subject of equal opportunities for women in the workplace and on the role of unions in securing those opportunities and eliminating discriminatory labor practices. Though set within a hospital and focusing on one of several staff women who are denied access to a pharmacy training program despite suitable qualifications, the underlying premises, conflicts, and responses have implications that reach far beyond the hospital walls
Erin Brockovich (2000)
131m; U.S.
Director: Steven Soderbergh
Cast: Julia Roberts, Albert Finney, David Brisbin
Synopsis: Based on the true story of an unemployed single mother becomes a legal assistant and almost single-handedly brings down a California power company accused of polluting a city’s water supply.
THE LABOR FILM DATABASE 