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Category Archives: Women

9 to 5 (1980)

110m; U.S

Director: Colin Higgins

Cast: Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Dolly Parton

Synopsis (IMDB): Frank Hart is a pig. He takes advantage in the grossest manner of the women who work with him. When his three assistants manage to trap him in his own house they assume control of his department and productivity leaps, but just how long can they keep Hart tied up?

 

 

 

Trailer

 

Black Girl (La Noire de…) (1965)

60M; Senegal

Director: Ousmane Sembene

Cast: Mbissine Thérèse Diop, Anne-Marie Jelinek and Robert Fontaine

Synopsis (IMDB): A Senegalese woman is eager to find a better life abroad. She takes a job as a governess for a French family, but finds her duties reduced to those of a maid after the family moves from Dakar to the south of France. In her new country, the woman is constantly made aware of her race and mistreated by her employers. Her hope for better times turns to disillusionment and she falls into isolation and despair. The harsh treatment leads her to consider suicide the only way out.

 

 

Full Film

 

 

Bread and Roses (2000)

110m; U.S.

Director: Ken Loach

Cast: Pilar Padilla, Adrien Brody and Elpidia Carrillo

Synopsis (IMDB): Maya is a quick-witted young woman who comes over the Mexican border without papers and makes her way to the LA home of her older sister Rosa. Rosa gets Maya a job as a janitor: a non-union janitorial service has the contract, the foul-mouthed supervisor can fire workers on a whim, and the service-workers’ union has assigned organizer Sam Shapiro to bring its “justice for janitors” campaign to the building. Sam finds Maya a willing listener, she’s also attracted to him. Rosa resists, she has an ailing husband to consider. The workers try for public support; management intimidates workers to divide and conquer. Rosa and Maya as well as workers and management may be set to collide.

 

Trailer

 

LABOR: Globalization, Labor and Women’s Lives

What drives the global economy? This diverse collection of five films uncovers the connections between the experiences of women on a local level to broader economic patterns worldwide. From sex work to sustainable wages, these films tackle some of today’s most relevant issues and highlight the ways women are mobilizing to make changes in their lives.

 
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Posted by on January 24, 2012 in Global Economy, Women

 

The $5.20 an Hour Dream (1980)

104m; U.S.

Director: Russ Mayberry

Cast: Linda Lavin, Richard Jaeckel, and Nicholas Pryor

 

 
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Posted by on January 24, 2012 in Children, Drama, Women, Working Class

 

A Crushing Love: Chicanas, Motherhood and Activism (2009)

58m; U.S.

Director: Sylvia Morales

Chronicles the achievements of five Latina/Chicana activisits, including the labor organizer/farm worker Dolores Huerta

Contact: Sylvia Morales smorales@lmu.edu

 

Alice: A Fight for Life (1982)

120m; U.K.

Director: John Willis & Peter Jones

Synopsis: A broadcast highlighting health and safety concerns affecting factory workers. Alice is 47. She worked in an asbestos factory when young. She now suffers from mesothelioma, an asbestos caused cancer. She fights for her life and her rights.

 
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Posted by on January 24, 2012 in Documentary, Safety & Health, Women

 

And Women Must Weep (1962)

26m; U.S.

Director: National Right to Work Committee

Synopsis: Anti-union film dramatizing a wildcat strike staged by the IAM in Princeton, Indiana in 1956-57.

 

Applause (1929)

80m; U.S.

Director: Rouben Mamoulian

Synopsis: American picture of the entertainer as proletariat and of the way we purchase women entertainers’ bodies – to look at if not to possess.

 
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Posted by on January 24, 2012 in Drama, Women

 

At Home in Utopia (2008)

133m; U.S.

Director: Michal Goldman

Synopsis (IMDB): During the economic boom of the 1920s, thousands of immigrant Jewish factory workers managed to build the house of their dreams, a cooperative apartment complex at the edge of Bronx Park. Then they were hit by the Great Depression. At Home in Utopia bears witness to an epic social experiment across two generations in the Coops – a place known as “little Moscow” – where people tried to change the American dream into one that included racial justice and workers’ rights.

Contact: Michal Goldman Michalman@aol.com Filmmakers Collaborative 397 Moody Street Waltham MA 02453 T 781 647-1102 F 781 647-1140