98m; Brazil
Director: Anselmo Duarte
Synopsis: Brazilian farmer in Northern Brazil carries a huge cross to the church to save his sick donkey. The priest refuses him entry and the working class in the town rally to his support.
Category Archives: Themes
Giving Care (2007)
11m;
Director: Clarissa De Los Reyes
Synopsis: When a phone call brings news of her father’s death in the Philippines, a Filipino caregiver working illegally in New York City must make a choice between her duties as the family breadwinner and her desire to go home to grieve her father’s death. “Giving Care” is a story about one of the worst fears of an immigrant far away from home: not being there when a loved one goes.
The Gleaners & I (2000)
82m; France
Director: Agnès Varda
Cast: François Wertheimer, Agnès Varda and Bodan Litnanski
Synopsis (IMDB): An intimate, picaresque inquiry into French life as lived by the country’s poor and its provident, as well as by the film’s own director, Agnes Varda. The aesthetic, political and moral point of departure for Varda are gleaners, those individuals who pick at already-reaped fields for the odd potato, the leftover turnip.
The Global Assembly Line (1986)
58m; U.S.
Director: Lorraine Gray
Synopsis: Traveling from Tennessee to Mexico’s northern border, from Silicon Valley to the Philippines, The Global Assembly Line takes viewers inside our new global economy. A vivid portrayal of the lives of working women and men in the “free trade zones” of developing countries and North America, as U.S. industries close their factories to search the globe for lower-wage workforces. We take a rare look at the people who are making the clothing we wear and the electronics goods we use–as well as the business decisions behind manufacturing–on the global assembly line.
Director/Producer/Creator/Executive Producer/National & International distributor of the documentary films by Lorraine W Gray: With Babies & Banners and The Global Assembly Line.
Burning the Future: Coal in America (2008)
89m; U.S.
Director: David Novack
Synopsis: This new film from American Coal Productions soberly illustrates the suffering of the residents of West Virginia who struggle to preserve their mountains, their culture, and their lives in the face of the omnipotent King Coal and examines the explosive conflict between the coal industry and residents of West Virginia.
Contact: burningthefuture@yahoo.com For Worldwide Sales for broadcast, theatrical, DVD and digital rights, please contact: Doug Zwick Specialty Studios Entertainment doug@specialtystudios.com Tel/Fax: +1.818.990.8461
Bus Rider’s Union (2000)
86m; U.S.
Director: Haskell Wexler
Synopsis: In this extraordinary video, Academy Award-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler records the several-year-long struggle of the Los Angeles Bus Riders Union (BRU) to win better service and to challenge the race and class bias in city spending priorities. At 86 minutes, it’s long for classroom use and drags in a few places for many high school students; but what a rich documentary this is. At the outset, Kikanza Ramsey, a young BRU organizer, explains that the union is “a political, social experiment to see if we can build a multiracial, bilingual, gender-balanced mass movement of working class people that is willing to fight for a set of demands that challenges corporate capital.” And this is not mere rhetoric. The remainder of the film brings her words to life, revealing the twists and turns, highs and lows of this struggle as seen through the eyes of participants.
Business as Usual (1987)
89m; Australia
Director: Lezli-An Barrett
Synopsis (IMDB): After seeing her husband fail in fighting a battle to keep his factory open, a manageress loses her job in a disagreement with the manager over sexual harassment of her staff. She accepts the advice of her father and joins his son, a left-wing organizer, and takes her plight to the union.
Butte, America
Synopsis: “a tribute to working class people/culture and focuses on the lives of five generation miners and their families who have lived and worked in Butte over the past 125 years”
Contact: Pamela Roberts; Producer, Rattlesnake Productions, Inc. pam.rattlesnake@gmail.com 1615 Hillside Lane Bozeman, MT 59715 Cell: 406-579-0304
Buyer Be Fair: The Promise of Product Certification (2006)
57m
Director: John de Graaf and Hana Jindrova
Synopsis (Bull Frog Films): Under the auspices of the WTO, globalization of world trade seems like a juggernaut that will not be stopped. But is there a way to make trade FAIR? How can retailers and consumers use their purchasing power and market choice to make the world better for people and the environment? What is the promise of product certification and labeling?
BUYER BE FAIR looks at two major trade goods — timber and coffee — to find out how certification works and whether it helps the world’s poor, and their lands. Can the lessons from certification of timber, by the Forest Stewardship Council, and coffee, by Fair Trade, be applied to other products?
Website: http://www.buyerbefair.org/
Bölge (The Zone) [2010]
40m; Turkey
Director: Güliz Saglam, Feryal Saygiligil
Synopsis: Seven workers, all women. Four free-trade zones in four different Turkish cities. Surrounded by high walls, barbed wire fences, very much like a concentration camp. This documentary covers the working conditions of women in the free-trade zones, their experiences, observations and their hopes for the future. The barbed wire fences not only surround the zones but also accentuate the captivity of women workers. So much so that the borders of the zone evade us, inside and outside become indistinguishable.
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