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Category Archives: Working Class

Down and Out in America (1986)

21 Feb

57m; U.S.

Director: Lee Grant

Cast: Lee Grant, Jeff Farmer and Bob Hanson

Synopsis: Three sectors of American society hit by recession in the mid-1980s: heartland farms, factory workers out of a job, and the new homeless. In Minnesota, 250 family farms are being repossesed each week; men and women talk about their farms, the nature of their bank loans, the onslaught of corporate farming, and their sorrow and despair. In cities where 3,500 jobs per day go overseas, unemployed workers contemplate their options. The newly homeless talk about the jobs they’ve lost, “Justice Ville” in Los Angeles (bulldozed by court order), and squatting in New York’s abandoned buildings. A family living in a welfare hotel tells their story.

 
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Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Documentary, Farm & Food, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Politics, Working Class

 

Drifting Clouds (Kauas pilvet karkaavat) [1996]

21 Feb

96m; Finland

Director: Aki Kaurismäki

Synopsis: Unemployment

 
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Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Drama, Working Class

 

Dubai: One City, Two Faces (2008)

21 Feb

29m; United Arab Emirates

Director: Ines Mendia

Synopsis: The documentary shows the underside of money in Dubai, a city where too much is never enough, and human rights are forgotten.

Contact: inesmendiaerror@yahoo.es 690607271 (Cell)

 
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Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Documentary, Global Economy, Working Class

 

Earl Robinson: Ballad of an American (1994)

21 Feb

60m; U.S.

Director: Bette Jean Bullert

Synopsis: This portrait aired on several major public television stations in the late 1990s. It captures the life and music of the composer of “Joe Hill,” “Black and White,” “Ballad for Americans” and other songs that convey the hopeful, progressive spirit of his generation. Rich in archival footage, this documentary includes performances of Robinson’s songs by Joan Baez, Frank Sinatra, Paul Robeson, Josh White, Three Dog Night, Peter, Paul & Mary, and of course, Earl himself. Judy Collins narrates.

 
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Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Documentary, Entertainment Industry, Organizing, Politics, Working Class

 

Edge of the City (1957)

21 Feb

85m; U.S.

Director: Martin Ritt

Cast:  John Cassavetes, Sidney Poitier and Jack Warden

Synopsis: Two New York City longshoremen Axel Nordmann, an Army deserter and Tommy Tyler, an easy-going freight car loader whose growing friendship is threatened by Charles Malik, a notably repellent punk.

 
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Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Blacks, Drama, Transportation, Working Class

 

The Efficiency Expert (1992)

21 Feb

97m; Australia

Director: Mark Joffe

Cast: Anthony Hopkins, Ben Mendelsohn and Alwyn Kurts

Synopsis (IMDB): An expert on productivity shows wacky workers in 1966 Australia how to run their moccasin factory like clockwork, despite laying off more than half the workforce.

 
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Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Drama, Working Class

 

Eight Men Out (1988)

21 Feb

119m; U.S.

Director: John Sayles

Cast: John Cusack, Charlie Sheen, David Strathairn, Christopher Lloyd, Studs Turkel

Synopsis: A dramatization of the Black Sox scandal when the underpaid Chicago White Sox accepted bribes to deliberately lose the 1919 World Series.

 
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Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Drama, Entertainment Industry, Working Class

 

Eight Times Up / Huit Fois Debout (2009)

21 Feb

103m; France

Director: Xabi Molia

Synopsis: Elsa scrapes through to the end of each month by doing odd jobs. At night, she cleans buses in a deserted coach station, during the day she looks after a child for a young couple. Hoping to land a job with a contract, she attends interviews with disastrous results. Her neighbour Mathieu is also looking for work and seems to have achieved perfection in the art of failing interviews. One day, Elsa is evicted from her flat. She finds herself faced with a life of uncertainty with only a potted plant for company. Mathieu occasionally makes her offers of love that she’s not ready to accept. The temptation to leave it all behind leads Elsa to a forest in which Mathieu has already found refuge and set up camp.

 
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Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Children, Drama, Working Class

 

El Contrato (2006)

21 Feb

51m; Canada

Director: Min Sook Lee

Synopsis: El Contrato (The Contract) follows Teodoro Bello Martinez, a father of four living in Central Mexico, and several of his countrymen as they make an annual migration to southern Ontario. For eight months of the year the town’s population absorbs 4000 migrant labourers who pick tomatoes for conditions and wages no local will accept. Under a well-meaning government program that allows growers to monitor themselves, the opportunity to exploit workers is as ripe as the fruit they pick. Only men with families to support and no more than an elementary school education need apply. Grievances – among them abusive bosses, unhealthy conditions and paying for benefits they don’t receive – are deflected by a long line of others “back home” who are willing to take their place. Despite a fear of repercussions, the workers voice their desire for dignity and respect, as much as for better working conditions. El Contrato ends as winter closes in and the Mexicans return home. Back in the embrace of their families some pledge, not for the first time and possibly not the last, that it’s their final season in the north. DVD of 2003 original.

 
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Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Documentary, Farm & Food, Immigrants/Immigration, Safety & Health, Working Class

 

El Norte (1983)

21 Feb

141m; U.S.

Director: Gregory Nava

Cast: Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez, David Villalpando and Ernesto Gómez Cruz

Synopsis: Mayan Indian peasants, tired of being thought of as nothing more than “brazos fuertes” (“strong arms”, i.e., manual laborers) and organizing in an effort to improve their lot in life, are discovered by the Guatemalan army. After the army destroys their village and family, a brother and sister, teenagers who just barely escaped the massacre, decide they must flee to “El Norte” (“the North”, i.e., the USA). After receiving clandestine help from friends and humorous advice from a veteran immigrant on strategies for traveling through Mexico, they make their way by truck, bus and other means to Los Angeles, where they try to make a new life as young, uneducated, and undocumented immigrants.

 
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Posted by on February 21, 2012 in Drama, Immigrants/Immigration, Organizing, Service Workers, Working Class

 
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