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Category Archives: Themes

The Pope’s Toilet (El baño del Papa) [2007]

20 Apr

90m; Uruguay

Director: César Charlone, Enrique Fernández

Cast:  César Troncoso, Virginia Méndez and Mario Silva

Synopsis (IMDB): In Melo, a poor Uruguayan country village near the Brazilian border, several men earn their living from contraband, mostly transported on bicycles. One of them, Beto, is getting too old for heavy freights but hopes to a earn a motorbike. The idea is to build and charge money for the use of a proper lavatory at the occasion of the first-ever papal visit to Uruguay, as is holiness is expected to pass trough Melo where he may be cheered by hordes of Catholic Brazilians.

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

 

Porto Marghera-The Last Firebrands (2004)

20 Apr

52m; Italy

Director: Manuela Pellarin

Synopsis: A film about petrochemical workers who took matters into their own hands in the giant industrial zone engulfing Venice. Porto Marghera documents autonomous workers and their experiences from the point of view of the worker-activists themselves. “The mass refusal of literally toxic work forced hours on the job down at the same time as driving wages up. The labour hierarchy that sets white collar against blue, permanent against casual, was attacked by workers insisting on the maximum for everyone. The battle in the factory was linked to working-class life outside through direct appropriation of basic social needs.

 
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Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Documentary, Environment, Organizing, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

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Portrait of Teresa (Retrato de Teresa) [1979]

20 Apr

103m; Cuba

Director: Pastor Vega

Cast: Idalia Anreus, Miguel Benavides and Samuel Claxton

Synopsis (IMDB): Teresa is overwhelmed: with a husband, three young sons, a job as a crew leader in a textile factory, and volunteer commitments as cultural leader of her union. Her husband, Ramón, wants more of her attention; her feelings are mixed, wanting domestic peace, feeling responsibilities to the revolution, and wanting to control her own life beyond doing dirty dishes. They separate; he begins an affair. When he wants a reconciliation, she asks what his response would be if she’d had an affair too. “But men are different,” is his reply. He’s failed her test, and to hold on to independence and self-respect, she remains uncompromising and hard-edged.

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

 

Portrait of a Coal Miner (1980)

20 Apr

15m; U.S.

Synopsis: Before the recent tragedy in Ferrell No. 17, Madison, Boone County, filmmakers for National Geographic’s new series, Community Life In America, made a film on the Marcum family. Marcus was charged with the deaths of several miners as a result of a gas explosion. Lawyers for the prosecuting attorney watched the film at The WV Cultural Center. Besides working as a shift manager Tom Marcum and family enjoy fishing and camping. Basic facts about coal mining are shown along with the lifestyle of coalmining families in WV. Access: 16 mm only, WVLC

 
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Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Documentary, Working Class

 

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Potiche (2010)

20 Apr

103m; France

Director: François Ozon

Cast: Catherine Deneuve, Gérard Depardieu and Fabrice Luchini

Synopsis (IMDB): When her husband is taken hostage by his striking employees, a trophy wife (Deneuve) takes the reins of the family business and proves to be a remarkably effective leader. Business and personal complications arrive in the form of her ex-lover (Depardieu), a former union leader.

 
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Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Collective Bargaining, Comedy, Romance, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

Poto Mitan: Haitian Women, Pillars of the Global Economy (2009)

20 Apr

52m; U.S.

Director: Renée Bergan and Mark Schuller

Cast: Marie-Jeanne Solange Frisline Thérèse Hélène

Synopsis: The compelling lives of five courageous Haitian women workers give the global economy a human face. Each woman’s personal story explains neoliberal globalization, how it is gendered, and how it impacts Haiti: inhumane working/living conditions, violence, poverty, lack of education, and poor health care. While the film offers in-depth understanding of Haiti, its focus on women’s subjugation, worker exploitation, poverty, and resistance demonstrates these are global struggles. Finally, through their collective activism, these women demonstrate that despite monumental obstacles in a poor country like Haiti, collective action makes change possible.

Contact: TÈT ANSANM PRODUCTIONS 139 Clinton Ave. #4, Brooklyn, NY 11205 347-599-1116 (phone/fax) info@potomitan.net

 
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Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Documentary, Global Economy, Manufacturing, Outsourcing, Politics, Women, Working Class

 

Power and the Land (1940)

20 Apr

38m; U.S.

Director: Joris Ivens

Cast: William Adams and Stephen Vincent Benet

Synopsis: A documentary showing the struggle to bring electricity to rural areas of the United States.

 

 
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Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Documentary, Labor History, Politics

 

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Prairie Fire (1977)

20 Apr

30m; U.S.

Director: John Hanson & Rob Nilsson

Synopsis: History of the populist, agrarian Nonpartisan League in North Dakota, 1915-1921. Includes film segments made during that time, plus numerous stills.

 
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Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Documentary, Farm & Food, Labor History, Politics

 

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Pravda (1970)

20 Apr

58m; Czechoslovakia

Director: Groupe Dziga Vertov and others

Synopsis: Pravda was filmed clandestinely in Czechoslovakia on 16mm. It’s one of those films Godard made with the Groupe Dziga Vertov – a Marxist film about the political situation after the ’68 revolution.

 
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Posted by on April 20, 2012 in Documentary, Politics

 

Performing the Border (1999)

19 Apr

42m

Director: Ursula Biemann

Synopsis (Women Make Movies): A video essay set in the Mexican-U.S. border town of Ciudad Juarez, where U.S. multinational corporations assemble electronic and digital equipment just across from El Paso, Texas. This imaginative, experimental work investigates the growing feminization of the global economy and its impact on Mexican women living and working in the area. Looking at the border as both a discursive and material space, the video explores the sexualization of the border region through labor division, prostitution, the expression of female desires in the entertainment industry, and sexual violence in the public sphere. Candid interviews with Mexican women factory and sex workers, as well as activists and journalists, are combined with scripted voiceover analysis, screen text, scenes and sounds recorded on site, and found footage to give new insights into the gendered conditions inscribed by the high-tech industry at its low-wage end.

Website: http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/pages/c474.shtml

 
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Posted by on April 19, 2012 in Experimental, Global Economy, Manufacturing, Women

 
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