6m; U.S.
Director: Mary Matthews
Synopsis: TWU Local 525 provides ground support for both manned and unmanned NASA missions and their jobs are at risk, as is the future of space exploration.
Contact: Mary C. Matthews Interactive Media Producer/Director Transport Workers Union of America 1700 Broadway 2nd Floor New York, NY 10019 Office: 212-259-4903 E-mail: mmatthews@twu.org
75m; Australia
Director: Maree Delofski
Synopsis: This striking film shows the struggle of Japanese Oki Electric Manufacturing worker and singer Tetsuro Tanaka. Tanaka refused to accept the militarization of his job through calisthenics and the mind control of the company. As result, he is harassed and fired by the company. Rather than giving up, he decides to sing every day in front of the factory. He has continued this battle for 28 years, and in the process, has exposed the nature of this corporate management system. Tanaka has been to LaborFest before, and his music continues to ring out. His words “Never import the corporate fascism of Japan!” continue to have meaning.
Contact: http://www.tanakafilm.com http://www.din.or.jp/~okidentt/eigohome.htm http://unionsong.com/u218.html
2007 35 mins. Joe Hodges
A second glass plant existed right across the street from LOF on MacCorkle Ave. SE in the Kanawha City section of Charleston. This plant became the largest producer of glass bottles in the world by the 1930s. In 1917, just one year after the LOF plant was founded, the Owens-Illinois Company began manufacturing fruit jars, jars for industrial products, and after Prohibition ended, beer bottles. This film tells the story of WV native son Michael Joseph Owens, the inventor of the bottle-making machine that revolutionized the glass industry worldwide. Photos of workers are shown, and videotape-showing reunions are included. The plant closed in 1963. Many workers at this plant would walk across the street and work at the LOF plant when things were slow.
Access: Joseph D. Hodges, 5426 Lancaster Ave. SE, Charleston, WV 25304, 925-1819, joe1819@suddenlink.net or David Radford, 2950 Pine St., Belle, WV, 595-1090. The WV State Archives has copies of both films LOF and OI films, made available to reseachers. Copies of both LOF and OI glass factory films should be available from WVLC and KCPL in summer 2009.
8m; Canada
Director: Kim Hutchinson
Synopsis: Retraining for the Global Economy is a comedy that documents the economic woes of Windsor, Ontario, and dares to ask the question: Where do we go from here?
Contact: khutch@huffmanroadproductions.com 519 738 3216 (Home)
Director: Phie Ambo
Synopsis (IMDB): “Mechanical Love” is a documentary on the interrelationship between robots and humans. The film portrays people who have a close relationship with a robot, and it takes us from the high temple of robot technology, Tokyo, Japan, to Braunschweig, Germany, to Italy and back to Copenhagen, Denmark. By this world tour director Phie Ambo seeks to highlight the human need for love and our craving to be loved by others – perhaps the two most important aspects of life. Through the main characters, she examines the cultural differences in how we accept emotional robots in the East and the West.
Contact: http://icarusfilms.com/new2009/ml.html lori@icarusfilms.com Sending screener
10m; France
Director: Franck Dion
Synopsis: Looking for efficiency and profit in his bomb factory, Mister Cok decides to replace his workers with sophisticated robots, but one worker is not discarded so easily.
Contact: rvdboom@papy3d.com Papy3d productions, 43 Bd Auguste Blanqui 75013 Paris, France
12m; U.S.
Director: A.J. Eaton
Synopsis: Bill, a retired construction expert, is offered the job of ‘Mr. Fix-It’ on a local television show. His debut, however, seems to be a bit confused…although he does seem to be ‘fixing’ things.
Contact: ajeaton@ajeaton.com 310-601-7898 Found on 2007 Palm Springs Shorts Film Fest: http://www.psfilmfest.org/festival/film/detail.aspx?id=19323&FID=31
22:39m; available on YouTube
Night Mail is a 1936 documentary film about a London, Midland and Scottish
Railway (LMS) mail train from London to Scotland, produced by the GPO Film
Unit. A poem by English poet W. H. Auden was specially written for it, used
in the closing few minutes, as was music by Benjamin Britten. (The two men
also collaborated on a rail-documentary on the line from London to
Portsmouth, The Way to the Sea, also in 1936.)
The film was directed by Harry Watt and Basil Wright, and narrated by John
Grierson and Stuart Legg. The Brazilian filmmaker Alberto Cavalcanti was the
sound director. It starred Royal Scot 6115 Scots Guardsman.
As recited in the film, the poem’s rhythm imitates that of the train’s
wheels as they clatter over the track sections, beginning slowly but picking
up speed so that by the time the narration reaches the penultimate verse the
narrator is speaking at a breathless pace. As the train slows toward its
destination the final verse is taken at a more sedate pace. The famous
opening lines of the poem are “This is the Night Mail crossing the border /
Bringing the cheque and the postal order”.
53m; Cameroon, Africa
Director: François Ducat
Synopsis (icarusfilms.com): Since the arrival of the Internet in the African republic of Cameroon, Internet Cafés have mushroomed. In a country where nearly half the population lives under the poverty threshold, many young women, who dream of escaping a life of misery by marrying a rich, white foreigner, surf the Internet for European marriage prospects at cybercafés such as Love.com, Affection.org, Flirt.net and Meeting.com.
In the capital city of Yaoundé, NORTH-SOUTH.COM interviews many of these young women who see Europe as a “paradise,” and who express incredibly naïve beliefs about European men-that they are more masculine, more romantic, have lots of money and always tell the truth.
The film also tells the stories of several Cameroonian women who married white Europeans, showing their current situations, the cultural differences with which they deal, and the personal sacrifices they made in exchange for economic security. We also learn of the tragedy of a 19-year-old woman who was lured to Paris by an Internet correspondent, taken captive and forced into prostitution for nine months before escaping.
In relating these heartrending stories of dreams, hopes, disappointments and happiness that develop from on-line encounters between black women and white men, NORTH-SOUTH.COM also provides a provocative contemporary portrait of the relationship between the “developed” and “developing” worlds.
Contact: http://icarusfilms.com/new2009/nsc.html lori@icarusfilms.com sending screener
108m; U.S.
Director: Joe Johnston
Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal, Chris Cooper, Laura Dern, Chris Owen
Synopsis: This popular film is based on the true story of Homer Hickam, Jr., the introspective son of a West Virginia mine superintendent who nurtures his dream of sending rockets into outer space. Homer’s boyhood dreams become reality, changing his life and the lives of everyone living in Coalwood, McDowell County, in the late 1950’s. This fictionalized autobiography is based on the book Rocket Boys by Homer Hickam, Jr.
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