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Category Archives: Themes

Monongah Remembered (2008)

30m; U.S.

Director: Peter Argentine

Synopsis: About the greatest loss of life as the result of a coal mine disaster in American history, the December 6, 1907 the Monongah Mine Disaster

Contact: www.argentineproductions.com http://www.monongahmovie.com/

 

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Monsieur Verdoux (1947)

124m; U.S.

Director: Charlie Chapin

Cast: Charles Chaplin, Mady Correll and Allison Roddan

Synopsis: Leaving the Little Tramp behind, Charles Chaplin plays a soft-spoken French gentleman who supports his children and crippled wife by marrying rich widows and killing them. Chaplin’s theme — that if war is the logical extension of diplomacy, then murder is the logical extension of business — is delivered in a series of darkly hilarious and elegantly staged comic sequences, culminating in another of the director’s poignant conclusions. Almost unanimously vilified upon its original release, it today takes its rightful place among Chaplin’s masterpieces.

 
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Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Comedy, Consumerism

 

Moonlighting (1982)

97m; U.K.

Director: Jerzy Skolimowski

Cast:  Jeremy IronsEugene Lipinski and Jirí Stanislav

Synopsis (IMDB): A Polish contractor, Nowak, leads a group of workmen to London so they can provide cheap labor for a government official based there. Nowak (Irons) has to manage the project and the men as they encounter the tempations of the West and loneliness and separation from their families. Nowak is the only one of the group who speaks English, and he uses this as a tool over his team. When the unrest in Poland leads to a military takeover, Nowak is faced with a much more difficult situation than he expected.

 

Morristown: In The Air and Sun

60m; U.S.
Director: Anne Lewis

Synopsis: Making the connections between immigration and the global economy In this hour-long documentary, director Ann Lewis chronicles nearly a decade of change in Morristown, Tennessee, through interviews with displaced or low-wage Southern workers, Mexican immigrants, and workers and families impacted by globalization. The film shows how working-class people in Mexico and eastern Tennessee are caught in the throes of massive economic change, challenging their assumptions about work, family, nation and community. “Morristown” is in Spanish and English with subtitles

 

Motel the Operator (Motl Der Operator) [1939]

88m; U.S.

Director: Joseph Seiden

Cast: Chaim Tauber, Seymour Rechzeit and Yetta Zwerling

Synopsis (IMDB): Motl, a poor laborer, loving husband and new father, leads cloakmakers in a strike for better working conditions. When he is severely injured by strikebreakers, his wife, Esther, and infant son are left destitute. Desperate to save her starving child, Esther gives him up for adoption to a wealthy couple, and then commits suicide.

Contact: Based on a play by Chaim Tauber Music by Sholem Secunda Yiddish with New English Subtitles; two suggestions from the National Center for Jewish film sharon rivo ncjf@brandeis.edu; co sponsor with Josh Speisier and teh DCJCC screening room;http://www.jewishfilm.org/motl.html

 

Mother Jones: America’s Most Dangerous Woman (2007)

23m; U.S.

Director: Rosemary Feurer & Laura Vazquez

Synopsis: Short, effective doc about legendary labor heroine Mary Harris Jones, the legendary labor heroine known as Mother Jones, examining the ways that Jones’ organizing career influenced early 20th century American history. The film demonstrates how the labor leader used class and gender boundaries to shape an identity that allowed her to become an effective labor organizer in the early 20th century. The documentary also evokes the terrible conditions and labor oppression that motivated Jones to traverse the country, mobilizing thousands to fight back. The film uses authentic photographs and live footage, including the only known film of Mother Jones on her deathbed, proclaiming that she still considered herself a radical and “longs for the day when labor will have the destination of the nation in her own hands.”

Contact: www.motherjonesmuseum.org http://www.laborheritagefoundation.org / Laura Vazquez, PHD, dept of Comm, Northern Illinois University, 815-753-7132 lvazquez@niu.edu Rosemary Feurer”

 

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Mother Kuster’s Journey to Happiness (1929)

121m; Germany

Director: Phil Jutzi

Cast: Alexandra Schmitt, Holmes Zimmermann and Ilse Trautschold

Synopsis (IMDB): A masterpiece about a working-class family in the late twenties in Berlin. You see Mutter Krauses fight for survival shown in such a modern way that you feel close even if it is nearly ninety years away. The way the camera (operated by the director himself) films the scenes and sometimes just the everyday life on the streets of Berlin is so energetic and real. The actors are playing very physical and natural (which was surprising for me as i expected acting in silent movies as much more stiff and awkward). All characters are very pure and just like in a documentary. Ilse Trautschold as the daughter is unforgettable. Whenever you get the chance to see this film go and watch it. Faßbinder once said it was his favorite film.

 
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Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Drama, Women, Working Class

 

Mother Trucker: The Diana Kilmury Story

89m; U.S.

Director: Sturla Gunnarsson

Cast: Barbara Williams, Timothy Webber and Rob Lee

Synopsis: Women making it in trucking.

 
 

The Mother (Mat) [1926]

90m; U.S.S.R.

Director: Vsevolod Pudovkin

Synopsis: Set in Russia during the harsh winter of 1905. A mother finds herself caught in emotional conflict between her husband and son when they find themselves on opposite sides of a worker’s strike. The son is a supporter of the workers but the father has been blackmailed into supporting the bosses and blacklegs. Despite the grief which follows the mother gradually comes to support the strikers and eventually is prepared to risk everything in standing up to police and Cossak troops in a demonstration endangering both herself and her precious son.

 

Mouseland (1962?)

Available on YouTube
7:43m (includes intro by Kiefer Sutherland, Tommy Douglas’ grandson)

The Story of Mouseland was a story told first by Clarence Gillis, and later and most famously by Tommy Douglas, leader of the Saskatchewan Co-operative mouselandCommonwealth Federation and, later, the New Democratic Party of Canada, both social democraticparties. It was a political fable expressing the CCF’s view that the Canadian political system was flawed in offering voters a false dilemma: the choice of two parties, neither of which represented their interests.

The mice voted in black cats, which represented the Progressive Conservative Party, and then they found out how hard life was. Then they voted in the white cats, which symbolized the Liberal Party. The story goes on, and a mouse gets an idea that mice should run their government, not the cats. This mouse was accused of being a Bolshevik, and imprisoned. However, the speech concludes by saying you can lock up a mouse or a person, but you cannot lock up an idea.

 

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