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Category Archives: Politics

Down and Out in America (1986)

21 Feb

57m; U.S.

Director: Lee Grant

Cast: Lee Grant, Jeff Farmer and Bob Hanson

Synopsis: Three sectors of American society hit by recession in the mid-1980s: heartland farms, factory workers out of a job, and the new homeless. In Minnesota, 250 family farms are being repossesed each week; men and women talk about their farms, the nature of their bank loans, the onslaught of corporate farming, and their sorrow and despair. In cities where 3,500 jobs per day go overseas, unemployed workers contemplate their options. The newly homeless talk about the jobs they’ve lost, “Justice Ville” in Los Angeles (bulldozed by court order), and squatting in New York’s abandoned buildings. A family living in a welfare hotel tells their story.

 
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Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Documentary, Farm & Food, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Politics, Working Class

 

Earl Robinson: Ballad of an American (1994)

21 Feb

60m; U.S.

Director: Bette Jean Bullert

Synopsis: This portrait aired on several major public television stations in the late 1990s. It captures the life and music of the composer of “Joe Hill,” “Black and White,” “Ballad for Americans” and other songs that convey the hopeful, progressive spirit of his generation. Rich in archival footage, this documentary includes performances of Robinson’s songs by Joan Baez, Frank Sinatra, Paul Robeson, Josh White, Three Dog Night, Peter, Paul & Mary, and of course, Earl himself. Judy Collins narrates.

 
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Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Documentary, Entertainment Industry, Organizing, Politics, Working Class

 

The Emerging Woman (1974)

21 Feb

40m; U.S.

Director: The Women’s Film Project

Synopsis: Uses film clips, old photographs, and newsreel footage to trace women’s struggle to attain equal rights in education, employment, politics and in the courts.

 
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Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Documentary, Organizing, Politics, Women, Working Class

 

The End of St. Petersburg (1927)

21 Feb

80m; U.S.S.R.

Director: Vsevolod Pudovkin, Mikhail Doller

Cast: Vera Baranovskaya, Aleksandr Chistyakov and Ivan Chuvelyov

Synopsis: A peasant comes to St. Petersburg to find work. He unwittingly helps in the arrest of an old village friend who is now a labor leader. The unemployed peasant is also arrested and sent to fight in World War I. After three years, he returns ready for revolution.

 
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Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Drama, Organizing, Politics, War, Working Class

 

End of the Rainbow (2007)

21 Feb

52m or 83m; 

Director: Robert Nugent

Synopsis: End of the Rainbow provides a concise, in-depth look at the impact of global extractive industries on local populations, their economy, their traditions and their environment. It depicts in striking details the confrontation of two cultures, one indigenous the other a unique reflection of the age of globalization. The film uses a gold mine in Guinea to explore whether concessions granted to transnational corporations are in the interest of the companies, the governing elite or the local community.

 
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Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Documentary, Global Economy, Politics

 

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Eugene Debs and the American Movement (1977)

21 Feb

43m; U.S.

Director: Cambridge Documentary Films

Synopsis: Documentary overview of the struggles of the workers in industry through historic union formations and workers’ political parties as observed in this film of Eugene Debs and heard in his own words as narrated by his friend and comrade Shubert Sebree

 

 
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Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Documentary, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Organizing, Politics, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts, Working Class

 

Even the Heavens Weep (1985)

21 Feb

55m; U.S.

Synopsis: The story of the Battle of Blair Mountain in 1921, the largest armed labor conflict in American history. TV star Mike Connors narrates this classic story about the long and bloody history of coal in Appalachia.

Contact: Debbie Oleksa West Virginia; Public Broadcasting, Morgantown, 1- 888-596-9729.

 
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Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Documentary, Organizing, Politics, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts, War, Working Class

 

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Tout va Bien (1972)

21 Feb

95m; France

Director: Jean-Luc Godard

Cast: Yves Montand, Jane Fonda and Vittorio Caprioli

Synopsis (Wikipedia): The film centers on a strike at a sausage factory witnessed by an American reporter and her French husband, who is a film director. The film is Marxist in its political message, explaining the logic of the class struggle, and Brechtian in its formal qualities, which emphasize the motion of the camera. The factory set consists of a cross-section of the building and allows the camera to dolly back and forth from room to room, theoretically through the walls. This makes the factory look like an ant farm, and serves the overarching Marxist agenda. This staging is also an homage to Jerry Lewis‘s film The Ladies Man in which a similar set is used for a women’s boarding house.

 
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Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Drama, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Organizing, Politics, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

F.I.S.T. (1978)

21 Feb

145m; U.S.

Director: Norman Jewison

Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Rod Steiger and Peter Boyle

Synopsis: Johnny Kovak joins the Teamsters trade-union in a local chapter in the 1930s and works his way up in the organization. As he climbs higher and higher his methods become more ruthless and finally senator Madison starts a campaign to find the truth about the alleged connections with the Mob

 
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Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Drama, Organizing, Politics, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts, Transportation, Working Class

 

Fighting Goliath – Texas Coal Wars (2008)

21 Feb

35m; U.S.

Director: Mat Hames and George Sledge

Cast: Narration by Robert Redford

Synopsis: About a group of politicians and citizens of Texas who worked together to prevent TXU from building 19 coal-fired electricity plants in their state.

Contact: http://www.fightinggoliathfilm.com/

 
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Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Documentary, Environment, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Organizing, Politics, Safety & Health

 
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