60m; U.S.
Director: Steven Fischler & Joel Sucher
Synopsis: Documentary of the Jewish Anarchists in the New York garment industry and their newspaper the Freie Arberiter Stimme.
Category Archives: Themes
Freedom Road (1979)
186m; U.S.
Director: Ján Kadár
Cast: Muhammad Ali, Kris Kristofferson and Ron O’Neal
Synopsis: Based on the Howard Fast novel, this miniseries tells the story of ex-slave Gideon Young’s trip from freemen to Senator and in doing so tells the stories of the hopes of Reconstruction and its fall.
Freedom Song (2000)
150m; U.S.
Director: Phil Alden Robinson
Cast: Danny Glover, Vicellous Reon Shannon and Vondie Curtis-Hall
Synopsis: HBO film based on the organizing of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee in McComb, Mississippi and highlights the role of young people in the work
Freedom on My Mind (1994)
105m; U.S.
Director: Connie Field & Marilyn Mulford
Synopsis: Documentary about the civil rights movement, focusing on the Mississippi Freedom Summer voter registration project.
We are the 99 percent (2012)
Director: Shabnam Hameed
Synopsis: We are the 99% is about (extra)ordinary working people who struggle to change the system in the wake of the global financial crisis.
Nurses, Jill and Maria set up a medical tent disobeying council ordinances to provide care for people who could not afford treatment.
Workers Peter and Julian fight for basic working conditions.
Sparrow faces the dilemma of how to sustain a democracy when racial tensions explode.
Over the course of 2 months, in the microcosm of Zuccotti Park they endeavour to create a good society and ultimately are brutally evicted igniting a world wide movement.
Watch the trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un3v6qbZw9o
Shabnam Hameed
+61 (0) 415 817 931 (Australia)
SKYPE: shabnamhameed
shabnam.hameed@gmail.com
Exit (2008)
41m; U.S.
Director: Sharon Lockhart
Synopsis: Companion film to Lunch Break (2008, 80 min., HD); here, Lockhart reverses the gaze, with a fixed camera and a nod to Lumière.
Everlasting Moments (2009)
131m; Sweden
Director: Jan Troell
Cast: Maria Heiskanen, Mikael Persbrandt and Jesper Christensen
Synopsis: Sweden, early 1900s. In a time of social change and unrest, war and poverty, a young working class woman, Maria, wins a camera in a lottery. The decision to keep it alters her whole life. The camera grants Maria new eyes with which to see the world, and brings the charming photographer “Piff Paff Puff” into her life. Trouble ensues when Maria’s alcoholic, womanizing husband, feels threatened by the young man and his wife’s newfound outlook on life.
The One Percent (2006)
doc; 80m, US
Directed by Jamie Johnson
In this hard-hitting but humorous documentary, director Jamie Johnson takes the exploration of wealth that he began in Born Rich one step further. The One Percent, refers to the tiny percentage of Americans who control nearly half the wealth of the U.S. Johnson’s thesis is that this wealth in the hands of so few people is a danger to our very way of life. Johnson captures his story through personal interviews with Robert Reich, Adnan Khashoggi, Bill Gates Sr., and Steve Forbes, during which both Johnson’s and his subjects’ knowledge and humor shine. And he’s not afraid to butt heads with Milton Friedman, the economist who coined the term “the trickledown effect.” He also shows how the other half lives, using real-world examples of the wealth gap: he takes a tour of a dilapidated housing project in Chicago, rides around with an enlightened taxi driver, and sees the human toll of the unfair economics of the Florida sugar industry. Johnson’s film is at its most powerful when it reveals how the super-rich work to preserve their own monetary dominance. As a member of the “Johnson & Johnson” family, he gets rare access to an exclusive wealth conference at which the über rich learn strategies for preserving their fortunes, and learns the personal management styles of some of the countries wealthiest employers. No great society has survived such a massive wealth gap; who knows if ours will? Written by Schafer, Nancy on IMDB
Indentured (2010)
documentary
10m, US (DVD)
Workers from places like India recruited to work for US contractors in Iraq in indentured servitude conditions
Filmmaker: Cy Kuckenbaker
1080 7th St
Imperial Beach, CA 91932
cykuck@gmail.com
661-670-7327
Degrees of Shame (1997)
U.S.
30m
Director: Barbara Wolff
Synopsis: Exploitation of part-time faculty in American higher education.
In 1960 Edward R. Murrow made a television documentary about the plight of migrant farm workers. Harvest of Shame examined the working conditions and economic realities of those least respected but absolutely vital workers in the agricultural industry, the harvesters.
To Barbara Wolf, a Cincinnati-based video documentarian, the economic situation and working conditions of adjunct professors suggested an information economy parallel to migrant farm workers. As with migrant farm workers, hiring of adjuncts is often done at the last minute, the extremely low pay is based on the number of courses taught, there are no benefits, there is no job security, and many adjuncts teach at more than one institution (often in different cities) trying to piece together a living.
Following the logic of Harvest of Shame, Ms. Wolf interviews a variety of adjunct faculty, who make visible the working lives of these faculty members who now do more than 40% of the teaching in America’s institutions of higher education. Interviews with university administration officials, union leaders, legislators, and other observers document both the problem and possible solutions.
Murrow concluded Harvest of Shame by asking his viewers to cultivate “an enlightened, aroused and perhaps angered public opinion” and to demand a change. Wolf sees her documentary as both informational and, in Murrow’s tradition, as a tool for change.
order from:
Barbara Wolf Video Work
1709 Pomona Court
Cincinnati, Ohio 45206
Phone (513) 861-2462
Br_wolf@hotmail.com
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