60m; U.K.
Director: John Baxter
Synopsis (IMDB): Young Peter wants so badly to be an engineer that he starts to work on an invention. To raise money, he and his friend Tim wash windows. However, Tim needs the money they earn to go to Ireland to visit his grandfather who is very ill, so Peter gives him all the money they have made. Everything works out well for Peter in the end when he is praised as a young genius
16m; U.S.
Synopsis: Describes the circumstances which caused over 400 workers at the O’Sullivan Rubber Company in Winchester, VA, to strike on 5/13/56 to preserve their union.
Synopsis (BFI): The BFI has compiled for the first time, the definitive collection of films from the 1950s’ Free Cinema movement. Free Cinema not only re-invented British documentary making, but this highly influential period in the country’s cinema history was the precursor for the better known British New Wave of social-realist films in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
The films were ‘free’ in the sense that they were made outside the framework of the film industry, and that their statements were entirely personal . They had in common not only the conditions of their production (shoestring budget, unpaid crew) and the equipment they employed (usually hand-held 16mm Bolex cameras), but also a style and attitude and an experimental approach to sound. Mostly funded by the BFI’s Experimental Film Fund, they featured ordinary, mostly working-class people at work and play, displaying a rare sympathy and respect, and a self-consciously poetic style.
Website: http://filmstore.bfi.org.uk/acatalog/info_150.html
60m; U.S.
Director: Steven Fischler & Joel Sucher
Synopsis: Documentary of the Jewish Anarchists in the New York garment industry and their newspaper the Freie Arberiter Stimme.
Director: Shabnam Hameed
Synopsis: We are the 99% is about (extra)ordinary working people who struggle to change the system in the wake of the global financial crisis.
Nurses, Jill and Maria set up a medical tent disobeying council ordinances to provide care for people who could not afford treatment.
Workers Peter and Julian fight for basic working conditions.
Sparrow faces the dilemma of how to sustain a democracy when racial tensions explode.
Over the course of 2 months, in the microcosm of Zuccotti Park they endeavour to create a good society and ultimately are brutally evicted igniting a world wide movement.
Watch the trailer at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=un3v6qbZw9o
Shabnam Hameed
+61 (0) 415 817 931 (Australia)
SKYPE: shabnamhameed
shabnam.hameed@gmail.com
41m; U.S.
Director: Sharon Lockhart
Synopsis: Companion film to Lunch Break (2008, 80 min., HD); here, Lockhart reverses the gaze, with a fixed camera and a nod to Lumière.
131m; Sweden
Director: Jan Troell
Cast: Maria Heiskanen, Mikael Persbrandt and Jesper Christensen
Synopsis: Sweden, early 1900s. In a time of social change and unrest, war and poverty, a young working class woman, Maria, wins a camera in a lottery. The decision to keep it alters her whole life. The camera grants Maria new eyes with which to see the world, and brings the charming photographer “Piff Paff Puff” into her life. Trouble ensues when Maria’s alcoholic, womanizing husband, feels threatened by the young man and his wife’s newfound outlook on life.
doc; 80m, US
Directed by Jamie Johnson
In this hard-hitting but humorous documentary, director Jamie Johnson takes the exploration of wealth that he began in Born Rich one step further. The One Percent, refers to the tiny percentage of Americans who control nearly half the wealth of the U.S. Johnson’s thesis is that this wealth in the hands of so few people is a danger to our very way of life. Johnson captures his story through personal interviews with Robert Reich, Adnan Khashoggi, Bill Gates Sr., and Steve Forbes, during which both Johnson’s and his subjects’ knowledge and humor shine. And he’s not afraid to butt heads with Milton Friedman, the economist who coined the term “the trickledown effect.” He also shows how the other half lives, using real-world examples of the wealth gap: he takes a tour of a dilapidated housing project in Chicago, rides around with an enlightened taxi driver, and sees the human toll of the unfair economics of the Florida sugar industry. Johnson’s film is at its most powerful when it reveals how the super-rich work to preserve their own monetary dominance. As a member of the “Johnson & Johnson” family, he gets rare access to an exclusive wealth conference at which the über rich learn strategies for preserving their fortunes, and learns the personal management styles of some of the countries wealthiest employers. No great society has survived such a massive wealth gap; who knows if ours will? Written by Schafer, Nancy on IMDB
U.S.
30m
Director: Barbara Wolff
Synopsis: Exploitation of part-time faculty in American higher education.
In 1960 Edward R. Murrow made a television documentary about the plight of migrant farm workers. Harvest of Shame examined the working conditions and economic realities of those least respected but absolutely vital workers in the agricultural industry, the harvesters.
order from:
Barbara Wolf Video Work
1709 Pomona Court
Cincinnati, Ohio 45206
Phone (513) 861-2462
Br_wolf@hotmail.com
75m; U.K.
Director: Ken Loach
Cast: Carol White, Ray Brooks and Winifred Dennis
Synopsis: From the BBC’s influential ‘Wednesday Play’ series. This tells the bleak tale of Cathy, who loses her home, husband and eventually her child through the inflexibility of the British welfare system. A grim picture is painted of mid-sixties London, and though realistic the viewer cannot but realise that a political point is being made. One of the consequences of this film was the enormous public support for the housing charity ‘Shelter’, whose public launch came shortly after the programme was first shown.
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