8m; U.S.-Cuba
Director: Francisco Gonzalez, Russell Griffin
Synopsis: A passion for work, a pursuit of art, and the leaves of the tobacco plant combine to create pleasure and pride for these Cuban-American cigar makers.
Contact: Found on the 2007 Palm Springs Film Festival: http://www.psfilmfest.org/festival/film/detail.aspx?id=19323&FID=31
48m; U.S.
Director: Heather Courtney
Synopsis: Immigrant workers.
Contact: Women Make Movies 212-925-0606 Director: 512-371-1337; hcourtney85@hotmail.com
94m; France
Director: Gustave de Kervern, Benoît Delépine
Cast: Yolande Moreau, Bouli Lanners and Benoît Poelvoorde
Synopsis: Black comedy about an unemployed French plant worker’s decision to hire a hitman to exact working-class vengeance on the rich and powerful.
106m; Italy
Director: Antonio Pietrangeli
Cast: Simone Signoret, Marcello Mastroianni and Sandra Milo
Synopsis: Neorealist comedy about four rebellious prostitutes who open a restaurant.
155m;
Director: Jennifer Dworkin
Cast: Diane Hazzard, Donyaeh Hazzard and Love Hazzard
Synopsis (IMDB): Documentary on a recovering crack addict and her troubled daughter as they navigate the obstacles of joblessness, parenthood, welfare, and public housing.
During the depression in England, a young woman from Lancashire is forced to become a rich bookmaker’s mistress just to help the rest of her family who are unemployed.
88m; Czechoslavkia
Director: Milos Forman
Cast: Hana Brejchová, Vladimír Pucholt and Vladimír Mensík
Synopsis: Young Czech woman escapes from regimented life in a state dormitory and factory labor to run off to the big city seeking romance.
160m; Cuba
Director: Humberto Solas
Cast: Raquel Revuelta, Eslinda Núñez and Adela Legrá
Synopsis: Traces episodes in the lives of three Cuban working women, each named Lucía, from three different historical periods: the Cuban war of independence (with Spain), the 1930’s, and the 1960’s.
28m; U.S.
Director: John W. McKelvey
Cast: Tiffany Anne Carrin, John W. McKelvey and Elise Falanga
Synopsis: A working mother is faced with the unexpected arrival of an invasive documentary film crew and the prospect of losing her job as a cashier at a major supermarket, when a group of managers from out of town drop by for an “informal inspection.”
80m; U..
Director: Sharon Lockhart
Synopsis: In her new series on the state of American labor, artist and filmmaker Sharon Lockhart turns her meditative gaze to workers at the Bath Iron Works shipyard in Maine. Lunch Break (2008, 80 min., HD) revisits cinema’s second-greatest invention after the close-up: the tracking shot. In one long, sensuous, uninterrupted take, the film moves through a factory corridor where workers linger while on their lunch break. The camera “tracks down,” literally, the minute, humble signs of humanity, captured at such a quotidian level that the viewer cannot help but be moved to the core. In the confines of an industrial setting, imperfect bodies unfold as sculptures in time as Lockhart’s evocative soundscape, designed with filmmaker James Benning and composer Becky Allen, extends from the drone of machinery to Led Zeppelin. Lunch Break is followed by the companion film Exit (2008, 41 min., HD), in which Lockhart reverses the gaze, with a fixed camera and a nod to Lumière.
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