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Category Archives: Organizing

When Miners March (2006)

13 Jun

7 discs

Director: Ross Ballard

Synopsis: William C. Blizzard, the son of Bill Blizzard, the “general” of the Battle of Blair Mountain, with the assistance of Wess Harris, compiled his many accounts of the West Virginia Mine Wars in his book, “When Miners March.” He had written most of the book for various labor publications anonymously in the 1950s. In 2005 Ross Ballard took the book and turned it into a monumental “audio movie,” complete with sound effects and original music. Songs on the special CD are by T. Paige Dalporto, Elaine Purkey, Hazel Dickens, Mike Morningstar, John Lilly and the Irish duo of Enda Cullen and Ian Smith.

Contact: http://www.mountainwhispers.com/MWGiftShop.htm.

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Biography, Documentary, Labor History, Organizing, War

 

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Where Do You Stand? Stories From An American Mill (2003)

13 Jun

63m; U.S.

Director: Alexandra Lescaze

Synopsis: Cannon textile workers (Kannopolis, North Carolina) contract fight to win one of the largest industrial union contracts in the South.

Contact: http://www.wheredoyoustand.info alexandra lescazemightyff@mac.com 845-353-2855 or 917-696-2494 / http://www.newsreel.org/nav/title.asp?tc=CN0169

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Documentary, Organizing, Textile Industry

 

Where the Green Ants Dream (1984)

13 Jun

100m; Germany/Australia

Director: Werner Herzog

Synopsis (IMDB): The geologist Lance Hackett is employed by an Australian mining company to map the subsoil of a desert area covered with ant hills prior to a possible uranium extraction. His work is impeded by some aborigines who explain that this is the place where the green ants dream. Disturbing their dreaming will destroy humanity they claim. Hackett informs the company which offers various “solutions” such as a large amount of money or a percentage of a possible revenue. Invited on a trip to a city some of the aborigines sees a military aeroplane and express the wish to own it. The company buys it and gives it to the aborigines as a sign of good will. A runway is made in the desert and the plane is flown to the location. All negotiations concerning the area fail and the dispute goes to a court of the Commonwealth. Parties and experts are heard, obstacles are met such as an aborigine who is the sole survivor of his tribe (and language) and therefore no-one understands what he is saying.

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Documentary, Organizing

 

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The Whistle at Eaton Falls (1951)

13 Jun

96m; U.S.

Director: Robert Siodmak

Cast: Lloyd Bridges, Dorothy Gish and Carleton Carpenter

Synopsis (IMDB): Lloyd Bridges stars as a union man at a small plastics plant in New Hampshire who is suddenly thrust into a management position when the owner is killed in a car accident. The film examines the tenuous relationship between management and labor and the effects on outside agitators.

The plant is the lifeblood of this small town, but the owner has fallen behind in bank payments and has outdated machinery. He’s losing contracts. Once Bridges takes over he decides to totally shut down while they try to land some contracts. He also tries to come up with an automatic cutter so that the plastic parts can be produced faster and cleaner. But an outsider (Murray Hamilton) keeps stirring up workers against Bridges and the widowed owner (Dorothy Gish). What ensues is a race against time as the workers become more and more disgruntled.

In a rare starring role, Bridges is excellent. Despite star billing, Gish has a smallish part. Other notable actors include Ernest Borgnine, Anne Francis, Arthur O’Connell, Anne Seymour, Carleton Carpenter, Parker Fennelly, Russell Hardie, Doro Merande, and James Westerfield.

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Collective Bargaining, Drama, Manufacturing, Organizing

 

Who Killed Chea Vichea? (2010)

13 Jun

85m; 

Director: Bradley Cox

Synopsis: In 1999, Cambodian garment workers demanding decent wages and working conditions found their leader in Chea Vichea. As president of Cambodia’s free trade union, he stood with them despite beatings and death threats. Until a sunny morning in 2004. As Vichea read the paper at a sidewalk newsstand, three bullets silenced him forever. Under intense international pressure, the police arrested two men and extracted a confession. They were sentenced to 20 years each. But did they have anything to do with the crime? What seems at first to be justice done starts to look like a frame-up. And the implications reach far beyond the police station and the courtroom: to the headquarters of the ruling party and to the garment trade that is Cambodia’s economic lifeblood. Director Bradley Cox shot Who Killed Chea Vichea? over five years, covering events as they happened and tracking down witnesses in a country where knowing too much can cost you your life. Who Killed Chea Vichea? is a highly charged murder mystery, a political thriller, and a documentary like no other.

Contact: http://www.whokilledcheavichea.com/

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Documentary, Global Economy, Organizing

 

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Wild River (1960)

13 Jun

110m; U.S.

Director: Elia Kazan

Cast: Montgomery Clift, Lee Remick and Jo Van Fleet

Synopsis (IMDB): A young field administrator for the TVA comes to rural Tennessee to oversee the building of a dam on the Tennessee River. He encounters opposition from the local people, in particular a farmer who objects to his employment (with pay) of local black laborers. Much of the plot revolves around the eviction of an elderly woman from her home on an island in the River, and the young man’s love affair with that woman’s widowed granddaughter.

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Blacks, Drama, Organizing, Public Sector

 

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Witness To Revolution, The Story of Anna Louise Strong (1984)

13 Jun

27m; U.S.

Director: Lucy Ostrander

Synopsis: This film contains the history of the 1919 Seattle General Strike in the context of the life of Anna Louise Strong, a partisan and a journalist, who reported on the strike and also on the Everett, Washington Massacre, which also took place in the same year. The film provides a close up look at why the strike took place and how it affected the working people of Seattle and the world.

Contact: http://www.stourwater.com/

View Online here: http://www.snagfilms.com/films/title/witness_to_revolution

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Available Online, Communism/Socialism, Documentary, Labor History, Organizing, Streaming Online (Youtube, Vimeo), Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts, Women

 

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The Blue Collar Worker and the Hairdresser in a Whirl of Sex and Politics (1996)

13 Jun

101m; Italy

Director: Lina Wertmüller

Cast: Tullio Solenghi, Gene Gnocchi and Veronica Pivetti

Synopsis (Amazon): It’s spontaneous combustion when Tunin meets Rossella at a victory rally the night of the hotly contested election. She’s a right wing pro-business zealot. He’s a leftist labor organizer whose libido shifts into overdrive the moment he sees the fiery Rossella. Tunin’s determined to seduce her, but Rossella conceives her own plan to deal with the self-centered Lothario. Only two obstacles stand in the way of a blissful union – their politics and his wife. Passion and politics run amok in this delightfully sexy farce, the latest from director Lina Wertmuller.

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Big Business/Corporations, Collective Bargaining, Comedy, Communism/Socialism, Organizing

 

Workers’ Voices (2009)

13 Jun

2.5m; U.K.

Director: Gary Williams

Synopsis: Three school meals workers talk about their jobs and working for Chartwell’s. Filmed as part of the UNISON Three Companies project organizing blitz on 4th November 2009

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Documentary, Education, Organizing

 

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The Working Class Goes to Heaven (La classe operaia va in paradiso) aka Lulu the Tool (1971)

13 Jun

125m; Italy

Director: Elio Petri

Cast: Gian Maria Volonté, Mariangela Melato and Gino Pernice

Synopsis (IMDB): Lulù is a real hard worker. For this reason he is loved by the masters and hated by his own colleagues. The unions decide agitations against the masters. Lulù doesn’t agree till he cuts, by accident, one of his own fingers. Now, after he understood the worker’s conditions, he agrees the unions and participates to the strike. He immediately is fired and, not only is abandoned by his lover, but also by the other workers. But the fights of the unions allow him under a new legislation to be hired again. At this point his mind starts giving signs of collapse.

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Collective Bargaining, Drama, Organizing, Safety & Health, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 
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