Singing for Justice tells the story of Faith Petric, a political radical, community organizer and charismatic performer who united folk music and progressive causes from the 1930s through the early 2000s. Narrated largely by Faith herself, the film weaves her musical and political journeys to showcase the central role of folk music in the transformational social movements of the 20th century.
Co-director: Estelle Freedman
ebf@stanford.edu
info@singingforjustice.com
Julia de Guzman
julia@jdgstudio.com
We were never supposed to know her name. She was a poor Irish immigrant who survived famine and war, fire and plague. Unable to save her husband or their four small children, she dedicated her life to saving working families everywhere. The robber barons called her “the most dangerous woman in America,” but workers called her “Mother Jones.”
Upton Sinclair said of her, “she had force, she had wit, she had the fire of indignation; she was the walking wrath of god.” Mother Jones said of herself “I’m not a humanitarian, I’m a hellraiser.” Most famously, she told her followers to, “pray for the Dead and fight like hell for the living.” She educated, agitated, and organized the dispossessed and showed America what it could be.
With the gap between the rich and poor growing wider by the day, the just and democratic society Mother Jones fought for is under attack. Her hour has come again. It is time that her story and the fierce struggles of working families are brought back to life.
Drawn from her autobiography, letters, speeches, and interviews, FIGHT LIKE HELL is as bold and forceful as Mother Jones herself. Adapted from Obie Award-winning Actress Kaiulani Lee’s one-woman play “Can’t Scare Me,” FIGHT LIKE HELL was written and performed by Lee and directed by Emmy-nominated and Peabody Award-winning filmmaker Ian Cheney.
A film by Joanna James
The documentary A Fine Line explores why less than 7% of head chefs and restaurant owners are women, when traditionally women have always held the central role in the kitchen.
Featuring candid interviews with world-renowned chefs including World’s Best Female Chef Dominique Crenn, Emmy Award-winning TV host Lidia Bastianich, two Michelin-starred chef April Bloomfield, Iron Chef Cat Cora, World’s Best Chef Daniel Humm and many more, A Fine Line grapples with themes sparking national conversations right now, including workplace harassment, equal pay, paid parental leave and career advancement.
56 min. | SDH Captions | Scene Selection
When the last factory in a small Rust Belt town closes its doors, an unlikely hero emerges in dutiful, quiet Allery Parkes. A career employee of the factory, the aging Allery, can’t reconcile how to live a life simply sitting at home doing nothing. Against the advice and pleas of his loving wife Lola, he forms an unlikely friendship with his charismatic neighbor Walter, in order to revive the defunct factory. As their community rallies around them – and as their former corporate bosses strategize how to implode this unexpected movement – Allery learns that he might be something he never thought possible: a leader.
Film info: Drama | 109 min | Director: Robert Jury | Country: USA | Language: English | Subtitles: Swedish
Julia Garner is “magnificent” as the personal assistant to a TriBeCa-based film executive whose sexual harassment of hopeful young starlets is an open secret. The name “Weinstein” is never once uttered, and it doesn’t have to be; the writer and director, Kitty Green, uses what we already know to fill in the blanks. We don’t even see the monster in question — he’s just a presence and a voice, in snatches of overheard dialogue and muffled fits of rage, and Green’s beautifully controlled film captures, with brutal, pinpoint accuracy, how that presence infects a workplace, and what happens when someone decides not to play along.
2018 ‧ Drama/Crime ‧ 2h 1m
Initial release: June 8, 2018 (Japan)
Director: Hirokazu Koreeda
Japanese: 万引き家族
Awards: Palme d’Or, Japan Academy Prize for Picture of the Year, MORE
Nominations: Cannes Jury Prize, Cannes Best Director Award,
On the margins of Tokyo, a dysfunctional band of outsiders is united by fierce loyalty and a penchant for petty theft. When the young son is arrested, secrets are exposed that upend their tenuous, below-the-radar existence.
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