Based off the John Steinbeck novel: an activist gets caught up in the labor movement for farm workers in California during the 1930s.
Director: James Franco
Category Archives: Themes
Pyme (2004) (SMB)
Directed by: Alejandro Malowiki
Running Time: 96 minutes.
Starring: Gabriel Molinelli, Duilio Orso, Bernardo Forteza.
www.pymelapelicula.com.ar
SMB (Pyme) is a fiction full length film that tells the slings and arrows of life within a plastic industry factory when its owner takes the dramatic and imminent decision to declare bankruptcy, thus leading to the factory’s closure, or calling a meeting of creditors as a last hope. A hope that, at the end of the film, will be crystallized as a cooperative. Pablo, in charge of the factory founded by his father, tries to face the conflicts that have disturbed all members of his SMB in Argentina, in the ’90s. Hounded by debts, they end up bearing an economic crisis that gives place to an undesired and unexpected war of everyone against everyone. They are under siege by a brutal and unfair neoliberal model. Gustavo, Pablo’s son, may become the only one who will dare go through the door that keeps opening and closing, preventing them from seeing the outside light.
La Demolicion (2005) (The Demolition)
Year: 2006
Genre: Comedy.
Country: Argentina.
Format: Color.
Running Time: 78 minutes.
Original Title: La Demolición.
Directed by: Marcelo Mangone
Written by: Ricardo Cardoso / Marcelo Mangone
Photography: Martín Nico
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5oCvZTJh52U
Based on a theatrical piece, it tells the story of a man tenacious about defending his company while, at the same time, another man shows up with the mission to destroy it. Osvaldo Lazzari undergoes precarious working conditions at a company that deals with the demolition of abandoned buildings. His boss has put him in charge of supervising the pulling down of an old textile factory where a big supermarket is meant to be built.
During the previous routine inspection, Lazzari finds an unexpected occupant in the building: Alberto Luna, a former employee obsessed with making the factory work again, who thinks that Lazzari has come to the company in order to reactivate production. And, as if that weren’t bad enough, police agents, promotional staff, the press staff and his own wife will turn poor Lazzari‘s situation even more difficult.
Industria Argentina (2011) (Argentine Industry)
Directed by: Ricardo Díaz Iacoponi
Country: Argentina.
Running Time: 96 minutes.
Starring: Aymará Rovera, Carlos Portaluppi, Cutuli.
http://www.indargentina-film.com.ar/indexar.html
Trailer: http://indargentina-film.com.ar/trailer.html
At Arlumar, a spare parts factory, workers resist to lose their only means of earning their living. Juan, as well as many other employees, has not collected his salaries for months. His pregnant wife and his debts make him foresee a very dark future ahead. Little by little, taking control of their desperation, Juan and his coworkers begin to organize themselves to keep running the company that has been abandoned by its owners. In that way, they assume the rebuilding of a company that has no employers, which proves to be a heavy burden to carry.
Evelyn Williams
Directed by Anne Lewis, USA, Appalshop,1995 (28 minutes)
https://store.appalshop.org/shop/appalshop-films/evelyn-williams/
Evelyn Williams is a portrait of a woman who is many things: a coal miner’s daughter and wife; a domestic worker and mother of nine; a college student in her 50s and community organizer; an Appalachian African American. Above all, she is a woman whose awareness of class and race oppression has led her to a lifetime of activism. Now in her 80s, she is battling to save her land in eastern Kentucky from destruction by a large oil and gas firm.
With humor, eloquence, and at times anger, Evelyn tells her story. Her family came to eastern Kentucky in 1922 when she was six years old. She remembers the Klan burning a cross on the mountain and describes the sense of powerlessness that followed a lynching for which the murderers were never arrested. She married a coal miner and later moved to West Virginia where her daughters were able to attend college.While her husband worked in the mines and helped organize the union, she cleaned the homes of coal company bosses. When the mines mechanized and laid off workers, the family moved to Brooklyn, N.Y. where Evelyn studied at the New School for Social Research and became active in efforts to improve her community. Her commitment to fight for justice and equality was deepened when her son was killed in Vietnam and the U.S. military misinformed and mistreated the family. Following retirement in the early 70′s, Evelyn and her husband returned to a piece of family land in Kentucky. Most recently, she has been a leader of a grassroots effort by Kentuckians for the Commonwealth to end oil and gas company use of the broadform deed to drill on surface owners’ land without their permission. In explaining her determination to preserve her land, she recalls her grandfather, an ex-slave, who said, “Take care of the land. Take care of the land. As long as you have land, you have a belonging.” The program portrays a fascinating and dynamic personality whose keen sense of communal and family history influences her determination. Through her story, Evelyn makes important connections between civil rights, women’s rights, and environmental concerns.
Deep Down: a story from the heart of coal country
Directed by Jen Gilomen and Sally Rubin, USA, Fine Line Films,
2010 (57 minutes) website
Beverly May and Terry Ratliff grew up like kin on opposite sides of a mountain ridge in eastern Kentucky. Now in their fifties, the two find themselves in the midst of a debate dividing their community and the world: who controls, consumes, and benefits from our planet’s shrinking supply of natural resources?
While Beverly organizes her neighbors and leads a legal fight to stop Miller Brothers Coal Company from advancing into her hollow, Terry considers signing away the mining rights to his backyard—a decision that could destroy not only the two friends’ homes, but the peace and environment surrounding their community. The two friends soon find themselves caught in the middle of a contentious battle over energy and the wealth and environmental destruction it represents.
Anti-Unionol
AFSCME, USA, 2013 (2 minutes)
DRASTICALLY REDUCES ECONOMIC EQUALITY AND THE MIDDLE CLASS.
10/10 CEOS RECOMMEND ANTI-UNIONOL TO THEIR WORKERS.
TIME-RELEASED EFFECTS ENSURE THAT THE 1% CONTINUE TO TAKE IN A GREATER SHARE OF THE NATION’S WEALTH.
FAST-ACTING FORMULA DECIMATES WAGES AND BENEFITS AND A SECURE RETIREMENT!
CERTIFIED AND APPROVED BY KOCH BROTHERS LABORATORIES.
Building Sustainable Unions: Africa
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Also in Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, Japanese, & Swedish
Local Organizing, Global Results: Indonesia
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Also in Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, Japanese, & Swedish
Defending Labour Rights in Mexico
rt: 5:36
Also in Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian, Japanese, & Swedish
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