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Category Archives: Documentary

A Day’s Work (2015)

19 Nov

“A Day’s Work” is a documentary film that examines the landmark workplace death of 21-year-old Lawrence
DaQuan “Day” Davis through the eyes of his family and the analysis of experts. Day was an employee of a
temporary staffing agency working at the Bacardi bottling plant in Jacksonville Florida in 2012. He was killed
90 minutes into the first day of the job – the first job of his life. The film introduces the prospective that the
temporary staffing industry makes workplaces more dangerous, is used to hide the safety records of some of
the biggest employers in the country, and makes the American Dream harder to reach for millions of working
people. With thousands killed in preventable workplaces accidents every year in the US, the film provides a
reminder of the cost of just one individual by vividly looking into the life and perspective of Day’s 17-year-old
sister Antonia.

90 minutes before he was killed on his first day of work as a temporary employee, 21-year-old Day Davis
texted a picture of himself to his girlfriend, excited for their future. Now Day’s sister, 17-year-old Antonia,
searches for answers. An investigation reveals the issues that led to Day’s death and how the $100 billion
temporary staffing industry is putting millions of American workers at risk.

Dave DeSario
tempemployees@gmail.com
(631) 374-6458

Documentary, 2015
TRT 54 min
Dir: David M Garcia
Prod: Dave DeSario

Film Website: http://www.tempfilm.com/film2/
Director’s Website: DavidMGarcia.com
Producer’s Organization: TemporaryEmployees.org

 
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Posted by on November 19, 2014 in Documentary, Retail, Self-Employed/Freelance, Service Workers, Working Class

 

Palikari: Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre (2014)

19 Nov

Directed and Edited by Nickos Ventouras
Original Score by Manos Ventouras
Associate Producer Menelaos Tzafalias
Louis Tikas song by Frank Manning (Best Folk Song, 2002).
website: http://www.palikari.org/

Summary
Palikari – Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre deals with labor relations in early 20th century America, as told through the story of Greek migrant and trade union activist Louis Tikas. 2014 marks the centenary of his brutal killing during what acclaimed historian Howard Zinn called the “culminating act of perhaps the most violent struggle between corporate power and laboring men in American history”. Director Nikos Ventouras and producer Lamprini Thoma chart the story of the great 1913-1914 coalminers’ strike and Louis Tikas’s murder, as it survives in oral and family traditions, as well as in official history. They interview historians and artists, some of them direct descendants of those striking miners. Labor movement emblem Mother Jones and industrialist John D. Rockefeller, Jr. also make cameo appearances in this palimpsest of memory, struggle and deliverance. Tikas’s story can but reverberate in our time, in view of what is happening with the rights of workers and immigrants around the world.

 
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Posted by on November 19, 2014 in Documentary, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Labor History, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

Shadows of Liberty

17 Jul

93 min – Documentary – 8 August 2013 (Germany)
Director: Jean-Philippe Tremblay

Film website

In this documentary, filmmaker Jean-Philippe Tremblay takes a journey through the darker corridors of the US media. Global conglomerates have called the shots for decades, and their overwhelming influence has distorted news journalism and compromised its values. In highly revealing stories, renowned journalists, activists, and academics give insider accounts of a broken media system. Controversial news reports are suppressed, people are censored for speaking out, and lives are shattered as the arena for public expression is turned into a private profit zone. Tracing the story of media manipulation through the years, Shadows of Liberty poses a crucial question: why have we let a handful of powerful corporations write the news?

 
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Posted by on July 17, 2014 in Arts/Culture, Big Business/Corporations, Documentary, Entertainment Industry

 

The Forgotten Space

17 Jul

112 mins; 2010
By Allan Sekula and Noël Burch
Film website

Investigates global maritime trade, highlighting displaced farmers and villagers in Holland, underpaid truck drivers in Los Angeles and Filipino maids in China. Sekula and Burch offer a sobering portrait of workers’ conditions, the inhuman scale of sea trade and the secret lives of port cities.

 
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Posted by on July 17, 2014 in Documentary, Environment, Global Economy, Safety & Health, Technology, Transportation

 

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Memory of Past Struggles (Memoria Para Reincidentes)

17 Jul

107min. Argentina. Made by Violeta Bruck, Gabi Jaime and Javier Gabino
Film website

Unions and labor militancy in the 70s: Shows how Argentinian workers were organizing independently of the Peronist labor movement as early as 1969, including in the powerful 1975 General Strike. It also shows the role not only of the bosses but also the government, which helped usher in mass repression eventually leading to a military dictatorship in 1976.

With footage from the period and reminisces of the past struggles, the film shows the strengths and weaknesses of the labor movement. Thousands of workers and labor activists were kidnapped and murdered as part of this US supported military coup in 1976.

In 2013, Argentina was again been rocked by mass general strikes against the economic assault on working people, and this documentary provides an up-close view of the militant trade unionists who are part of the working class history of Argentina.

 

 
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Posted by on July 17, 2014 in Communism/Socialism, Documentary, Labor History, Organizing, Politics, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts, Working Class

 

The Conditions of the Working Class In England 

17 Jul

2012 British; 82 min.
Directed by Mike Wayne and Deirdre O’Neill

This film is inspired by Engels’ book written in 1844, The Condition of the Working Class in England. How much has really changed since then?

In 2012 a group of working class people from Manchester and Salford come together to create a theatrical show from scratch based on their own experiences and Engels’ book. They have eight weeks before their first performance. The Condition of the Working Class follows them from the first rehearsal to the first night performance and situates their struggle to get the show on stage in the context of the daily struggles of ordinary people facing economic crisis and austerity politics. The people who came together to do the show turned from a group of strangers, many of whom had never acted before, into The Ragged Collective, in little more than two months.

This film, full of political passion and anger, is a wonderful testament to the creativity, determination and camaraderie of working people that blows the media stereotypes of the working class out of the water.

 
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Posted by on July 17, 2014 in Arts/Culture, Class, Communism/Socialism, Documentary, Labor History, Working Class

 

Jai Bhim Comrade: Blast From The Caste

17 Jul

Director – Anand Patwardhan (180 min) 2012

The recent election in India of a rightwing reactionary government and the collapse of the Congress Party again exposes the basic contradictions within India. The lowest caste, the Dalit or “untouchables,” for thousands of years, was denied education and treated as bonded labour. By 1923 Bhimrao Ambedkar broke the taboo, won doctorates abroad and fought for the emancipation of his people. He helped draft India’s Constitution and led his followers to discard Hinduism for Buddhism. His legend still spreads through poetry and song.

In 1997, a Dalit protest erupted in a Mumbai slum after a statue of B.R. Ambedkar was desecrated. Ambedkar (1891-1956) was a reformist who agitated to end the caste system, helped Gandhi write the Indian constitution and amassed a large following among the Dalit. At the protest, 10 unarmed people were killed when police opened fire. Singer, poet and activist Vilas Ghogre later committed suicide to protest the killings.

Shot over 14 years, this three hour film is jam-packed with information. The film covers the biographies of both Ghogre and Ambedkar as well as Indian politics and the day-to-day lives of the Dalit who are still struggling for freedom and justice in India.

 

 
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Posted by on July 17, 2014 in Discrimination: Racism, Sexism, etc, Documentary, Service Workers, Working Class

 

All Points North

17 Jul

Documentary (Athens/ London 2013, 25 minutes)
Producer: BlueArts Film, Mizgin Müjde Arslan, Dir: Therese Koppe
Original Language: French, with English subtitles.
Facebook page

“It certainly will be a different Europe, not like here in Greece”, states Laurent in an assuring voice. The dream of heading North is the driving motivation for Laurent and Ibrahim, two young men leaving their country of Senegal in search of a better life.As undocumented migrants, they find themselves trapped in Greece, bound to the Greek borders by the lack of immigration papers. Before leaving their homeland their impressions of Europe were very different from the harsh realities they faced once arriving. For migrants such as Laurent and Ibrahim, there is no stability in a better, safer land; their journeys to find such are continually ongoing.

 
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Posted by on July 17, 2014 in Blacks, Discrimination: Racism, Sexism, etc, Documentary, Immigrants/Immigration, Migrant workers

 

155 Sold

17 Jul

46 min; 2012, Greece, Greek in English subtitles
Directed by George Panteleakis
film website

Greece was selected to be the first European economic experiment with a massive austerity program to privatize and destroy social services. This destruction of jobs and public services led to a massive protest in May 2011 and this full contact documentary shows the struggle shot by the film maker and activists in the struggle. Thick clouds of smoke covered the angry protests around Syntagma Square (Constitution Square) on 28-29 June 2011, while a majority of 155 deputies of the Greek Parliament bowed down to the austerity agenda. The working class, retirees and students engaged in mass protests and faced violence against them by the police.

 
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Posted by on July 17, 2014 in Documentary, Politics, Public Sector, Unemployment-Wages

 

Empire of Shame

02 Jul

Director – Hong Li-gyeong (92 min) 2013, Korea

Empire of Shame is about the struggle of Samsung workers to defend their health and safety and get compensation from the company. The corporation refused to admit that workers were getting cancer from the chemicals and toxins that were used in the plants.

A total of 193 employees have applied for workers compensation for industrial diseases and 73 of these workers have already lost their lives to disease.

Workers are required to give direct proof of a casual link between their duties and their sickness. This makes it extremely difficult for worker who are very sick to get the treatment they need.

This film shows the struggle to get to the truth and to defend the health and safety of the workers.

http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_entertainment/624867.html

 
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Posted by on July 2, 2014 in Documentary, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Safety & Health

 
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