35; U.K.
Director: Platform Films
Synopsis: From the inside of the Rail, Maritime and Transportation workers in the UK.
Category Archives: Transportation
Race To The Bottom (2009)
20m; U.S.
Director: Michael Hamm, Jonathan King
Synopsis: This story is about the 2,000 independent truck drivers working at the Port of Oakland, The film gives us a look into the lives of the drivers and their struggles to earn a living wage, support their families, and stay healthy as they do their jobs, transporting goods in and out of the port. It also shows their efforts to build a community coalition to protect their jobs and their health and make their voices heard.
Rail Against Privatization (2005)
60 min; U.K.
Director: Platform Films
Synopsis: British Rail workers fight to end privatization of rail system.
Contact: Link to rail union website: http://www.rmt.org.uk/
Rail Warning (2005)
43m; Japan
Director: Akira Matsubara & Video Press
Synopsis: Examines the cause of the disastrous Amagasaki rail accident in Osaka, Japan. This train wreck killed over a 100 people and the causes were directly related to the privatization and massive speed-up of railway workers.
Riding the Rails (1997)
72m; U.S.
Director: Lexy Lovell, Michael Uys
Synopsis: Riding the Rails offers a visionary perspective on the presumed romanticism of the road and cautionary legacy of the Great Depression. From ‘middle class gentility to scrabble-ass poor,’ the undiscriminating Great Depression forced 4,000,000 Americans away from their homes and onto the tracks in search of food and lodging. Of this number, a disturbing 250,000 of the transients were children. The filmmakers relay the experiences and painful recollections of these now-elderly survivors of the rails. Forced to travel more by economic necessity than the spirit of adventure, the film’s subjects dispel romantic myths of a hobo existence and its corresponding veneer of freedom. Riding the Rails recounts the hoboes’ trade secrets for survival and accounts of dank miseries, loneliness, imprisonment, death, and dispossession. Sixty years later, the filmmakers transport their subjects back to the tracks…
Life in Tuzla Shipyards, The/ Tuzla Tersaneleri’nde Hayat (2008)
41m; Turkey
Director: Petra Holzer, Selçuk Erzurumlu, Ethem Özgüven Kurgu
Synopsis: Tuzla graveyard overlooks massive shipbuilding area where great profits are made and workers die.
Contact: http://4857-documentary.blogspot.com/ petramh@gmail.com
Miles of Smiles, Years of Struggle: The Untold Story of the Black Pullman Porter (1982)
58m; U.S.
Director: Jack Santino, Paul R. Wagner
Synopsis: Black working-class mobility
Mother Trucker: The Diana Kilmury Story
89m; U.S.
Director: Sturla Gunnarsson
Cast: Barbara Williams, Timothy Webber and Rob Lee
Synopsis: Women making it in trucking.
Movin’ On (1968)
60m; U.S.
Director: Harold Meyer
Synopsis: This roaring railroad film (1968) reveals the incredible history of railroading from the 1830s until today. The Hell on Wheels towns, the Chinese and Irish immigrants building a railroad with their sweat and brawn but battling each other along the way, the robber barons and their union busting, Mr. Pullman and his Pullman car, the glitter of the “golden age”, Eugene V. Debs, the glory days of the passenger trains of the 1930s and 40s.
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