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Category Archives: Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

Brothers Under the Skin (1912)

23 Dec

Drama, Short | 2 October 1912 (USA)

Jack Adams, spokesman for workmen in a factory, pleads with the owner, Griscom, against a twenty percent cut in wages. Griscom refuses to consider the men’s side, so the men walk out. Jack, seeking work at another factory, is “black-listed.” He leaves in an ugly mood. Unable to find work anywhere, he is reduced to starvation. His wife needs a doctor. Jack sends a note to Griscom pleading to be taken back. Griscom answers, “Glad to see you so humble, but you can’t work for me.” Jack, irate, determines on vengeance. Outside Griscom’s mansion Jack is overcome by weakness. Elsie, Griscom’s favorite child, finds Jack, and has him taken into the house. Griscom comes in, suspects Jack’s intentions, and accuses him. Jack tells of his terrible suffering. Elsie tries to console him. Jack is overcome. Griscom relents and offers food. Jack refuses. Elsie puts her arms around Jack, and he accepts the food. The touching scene penetrates the armor of Griscom’s selfishness, and he offers his hand to Jack, who accepts it.

—Moving Picture World synopsis
 
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Posted by on December 23, 2018 in Classic, Drama, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

The St. Louis Kid (1934)

23 Dec

Director: Ray Enright
Writers: Warren Duff (screen play), Seton I. Miller (screen play) | 1 more credit »
Stars: James Cagney, Patricia Ellis, Allen Jenkins

Drama directed by Ray Enright and starring James Cagney as a truck driver who gets mixed up in a union dispute after a union leader is killed and his girlfriend is kidnapped after witnessing the crime.

Trucker Eddie Kennedy gets involved with the law when he has an car accident with Ann Reid and knocks the owner of a dairy out. He evades a penalty when he claims, that he had done it as an act of solidarity with the farmers. The farmers start an boycott action against this dairy, so the owner has to bring milk from elsewhere to his dairy, but the farmers closed the road, and Kennedy is arrested once more. He leaves jail at night to meet Ann, but meanwhile the owner has asked some mobsters to deliver the milk. One of the farmers is murdered, Ann Reid is missing and Eddie Kennedy is accused of murder.

 
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Posted by on December 23, 2018 in Drama, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts, Transportation

 

163 DAYS (163 DÍAS. LA HUELGA DE BANDAS)

23 Dec

Larraitz Zuazo
Spain | 2017 | Documentary | 68 minutes
In 1966, 800 workers from the Biscayan company ‘Laminación de Bandas en Frio’ carried out the longest strike of Franco’s dictatorship. In a tumultuous historic moment within the framework of growing organisation of the working class and anti­Franco sentiments, hundreds of residents of Etxebarri, Basauri and Otxarkoaga launched a political struggle that would end up being an example for the entire labor movement that would follow. Through the main characters and their stories, anecdotes and experiences, we create an image of the 163 days of strike that made the dictatorship’s foundations shake.

 
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Posted by on December 23, 2018 in Documentary, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Labor History, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts, Working Class

 

A Feeling Greater Than Love

23 Dec

Mary Jirmanus Saba
Lebanon | 2017 | Documentary | 93 minutes

Dreams of popular revolution, erased by civil war. A young girl martyred at a factory strike in Beirut in 1972 – her identity shrouded in mystery.  A meditation on revolution, cinema and their possibilities, past and present.

In her directorial debut, Mary Jirmanus Saba deals with a forgotten revolution, saving from oblivion bloodily suppressed strikes at Lebanese tobacco and chocolate factories. These events from the 1970s, which held the promise of a popular revolution and, with it, of women’s emancipation were erased from collective memory by the country’s civil wars. Rich in archival footage from Lebanon’s militant cinema tradition, the film reconstructs the spirit of that revolt, asking of the past how we might transform the present.

 
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Posted by on December 23, 2018 in Documentary, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts, Women, Working Class

 

At War (En guerre)

23 Dec
| Drama | 16 May 2018 (France)
Cinema Libre Studio; Richard Castro: rcastro@cinemalibrestudio.com

After promising 1100 employees that they would protect their jobs, the managers of a factory decide to suddenly close up shop. Laurent takes the lead in a fight against this decision.

Director:  Stéphane Brizé

Writers:  Ralph Blindauer (collaboration), Stéphane Brizé (screenplay) | 3 more credits »

Stars:  Vincent Lindon, Mélanie Rover, Jacques Borderie 

The presentation of Stephane Brize’s At War received a 15 minute ovation at the end. The film details the way that French workers at a factory, who were promised work for five years and who gave back hours and wages after two years, find out that the German owned company, which is making a profit, is going back on its word. It is closing because it can reduce wages even further by moving to Romania. The film premiered the day after Oxfam announced that of the leading industrialized countries French businesses returned the greatest share of their profits, 68%, to shareholders who simply pocketed the money, a factor which is revealed in the film as also driving the plant closing. The film concentrates solidly on the attempts to resist the firing of the factory workers with little psychologizing of his characters in a way that keeps it focused on their economic plight. The only problem was the overemphasis on one worker, played by Vincent London, one of the only professional actors in the cast, but miscast in a film whose subject was the collective group of workers. This character though does come finally to expresses the near hopelessness of workers caught in the global corporate capitalist vice, and the ovation at the premiere seemed to be as much for French workers themselves as for the cast, crew, and film.

 
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Posted by on December 23, 2018 in Collective Bargaining, Drama, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts, Working Class

 

Sorry to Bother You (2018)

23 Dec

R | 1h 51min | Comedy, Fantasy, Sci-Fi | 13 July 2018 (USA)
Director: Boots Riley
Writer: Boots Riley
Stars: Lakeith Stanfield, Tessa Thompson, Jermaine Fowler
website

NYT article here
“Sorry to Bother You” comes out in wide release in July 2018. The film is visually ingenious and funny, yet grounded by pointed arguments about the obstacles to black success in America, the power of strikes and the soul-draining predations of capitalism.

 
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Posted by on December 23, 2018 in Comedy, Communism/Socialism, Discrimination: Racism, Sexism, etc, Drama, Immigrants/Immigration, Migrant workers, Organizing, Romance, SciFi, Service Workers, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts, Temp/Precarious work

 

Nae Passaran

22 Dec

| Documentary, Animation, History | 4 March 2018 (UK)

Director:  Felipe Bustos Sierra
Writer: Felipe Bustos Sierra
Stars: Bob Fulton, Stuart Barrie, John Keenan |

In a Scottish town in 1974, factory workers refuse to carry out repairs on warplane engines in an act of solidarity against the violent military coup in Chile. Four years pass before the engines, left to rust in factory yard, mysteriously disappear in the middle of the night.

website

 
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Posted by on December 22, 2018 in Class, Documentary, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

VERONA: The Story of the Everett Massacre

07 Mar

Denise Ohio
Holy Toledo Pictures, Inc.
ohio@holytoledo.com

 
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Posted by on March 7, 2018 in Labor History, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

NOTHING FACTORY, THE [A FÁBRICA DE NADA]

07 Mar

This multilayered examination of the struggle of the blue-collar working class holds a mirror to the political landscape in contemporary Portugal, and runs the gamut from cinema vérité to neorealist musical. Employees at an elevator parts manufacturer catch thieves robbing the factory. But the thieves have been hired by the management, who soon order the workers to report for their shifts and do nothing until the company-wide layoffs can begin. Factions form around those who want to strike and save their jobs and those who just want a decent severance package. FIPRESCI Prize, 2017 Cannes Film Festival; Official Selection, 2017 Toronto, Karlovy Vary, Busan film festivals. DIR/SCR/PROD Pedro Pinho; SCR/PROD Tiago Hespanha, Luisa Homem, Leonor Noivo; PROD João Matos, Susana Nobre. Portugal, 2017, color, 177 min. In Portuguese and French with English subtitles. NOT RATED
Run Time: 177 Minutes
Genre: Drama

 
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Posted by on March 7, 2018 in Big Business/Corporations, Collective Bargaining, Drama, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts, Working Class

 

Death in Sarajevo

14 May

Smrt u Sarajevu

DANIS TANOVIC
Bosnia & Herzegovina, 2016
85 minutes, Color
Official website

Winner of the Jury Grand Prix and the International Film Critics Award at last year’s Berlin International Film Festival, Death in Sarajevo is a timely drama from acclaimed Bosnian filmmaker Danis Tanovic (FFDC 2015’s Tigers, the 2001 Foreign Language Oscar®-winning No Man’s Land). At Sarajevo’s Hotel Europe, preparations are under way to host the European Union’s centenary commemorating the assassination of Franz Ferdinand by Gavrilo Princip that triggered World War I, a French actor is in the Presidential Suite rehearsing the Bernard-Henri Levy play from which the hotel got its name, and a TV crew is filming local scholars discussing regional history. Manager Omer is dealing with a cash flow problem and a looming strike by workers while his assistant, Lamija, tries to keep things organized in the face of growing discord. What could possibly go wrong in the course of this highly charged history lesson?—Eddie Cockrell

In Bosnian with English subtitles

 
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Posted by on May 14, 2017 in Collective Bargaining, Drama, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts, Working Class

 
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