Documentary | THE LABOR FILM DATABASE

High Power

(27 min) by Pradeep Indulkar, India

This powerful film is about the lives of workers and the community at the Tarapur nuclear power plant, which was built fifty years ago in a poor rural community. Like other nuclear power plants around the world, people in the community were displaced and provided no real compensation but they were promised good jobs.

This, like the other promises according to the people of Tarapur, turned out to be a lie. They also become the victims of diseases directly caused by radiation and other toxins brought into their community by the plant

Their community, their lives and their work turn into a nightmare they are struggling against as are communities where nuclear plants have been built.

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

The Plundering

02 Jul

By Oliver Ressler (40 min.) 2013 Austria

Extreme levels of privatization can only be carried out under conditions where people are under severe pressure, as in the transformation of former Soviet republics towards independence and capitalism. Since the Rose Revolution in 2003, the former Soviet republic Georgia under went such a radical transformation. President Mikheil Saakashvili implemented one of the most extreme neoliberal projects in the world. Today, Georgia is 9th among 185 states on the World Bank list of “Ease of Doing Business” countries. This is creating an unstable situation in a radical, free-market economy with the liquidation of most social safety nets. Most Georgian residents are being driven into un-experienced levels of poverty.

The Plundering focuses on four cases of aggressive, state-property privatization policies in Tbilisi. Through interviews, it discusses the privatization of the water system in Tbilisi and of Tbilisi’s popular market, the Dezerter Bazaar. A newly emerging movement prevented the attempted sell-off of the National Scientific Library, and the destruction and conversion of the historical Gudiashvili Square in Tbilisi’s city center into a shopping mall.

Trailer: http://www.ressler.at/the_plundering/

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Posted by Labor Film Database on July 2, 2014 in Collective Bargaining, Documentary, Unemployment-Wages

ASOTRECOL, The Struggle Against Transnationals in Colombia

02 Jul

(55 min.) 2013, Colombia
With tactics ranging from hunger strikes with lips stitched shut to a nearly 1,000-day sit-in at the U.S. Embassy, Colombian workers are putting the world’s attention on General Motors’ treatment of its workers. This film tells the incredible story of an association of injured workers who have taken on one of the most powerful corporations in the world, and have won victories they never thought were possible. The Obama administration pushed the US Colombian trade agreement with the argument that it would protect the workers of Colombia from assassinations and repression because of labor protections. Since the agreement was passed by the Congress and signed by President Obama the repression continues and US corporations like GM and Coca-Cola continue to injure and terrorize Colombian workers.

Injured workers from Asotrecol have also come to the United States to the headquarters of General Motors to demand justice and have not received justice. The UAW which owned shares in General Motors have also been silent about the treatment of the Colombian GM workers and the struggle continues.

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Posted by Labor Film Database on July 2, 2014 in Big Business/Corporations, Documentary, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Safety & Health, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

Miners Shot Down (2014)

02 Jul

(85 min) 2014 by Rehad Desai (South Africa)

In August 2012, mineworkers in one of South Africa’s biggest platinum mines began a wildcat strike for better wages. Six days later the police used live ammunition to brutally suppress the strike, killing 34 and injuring many more. Using the point of view of the Marikana miners, Miners Shot Down follows the strike from day one, showing the courageous but isolated fight waged by a group of low-paid workers against the combined forces of the mining company Lonmin, the ANC government and their allies in the National Union of Mineworkers. What emerges is collusion at the top, spiraling violence and the country’s first post-apartheid massacre. South Africa will never be the same again.
Film Website

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Posted by Labor Film Database on July 2, 2014 in Collective Bargaining, Discrimination: Racism, Sexism, etc, Documentary, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

Nae Pasaran! (They Won’t Pass)

29 Jun

This stunning story of global worker cooperation is told by the recounting of events some 35 years ago, as Augusto Pinochet, backed by the US government, murdered a democratically elected leader, Salvadore Allende. As thousands of union members, students, leftists and all manner of Allende supporters were rounded up into killing centers, Pinochet began using his small aircraft fleet to strafe and attack rebel holdouts in the countryside. Scottish union airplane engine mechanics (where the jets had been built) saw news footage of this brutality and decided to take action to save fellow workers they’d never even known about, much less met. A heroic and moving story.

Directed by: Felipe Bustos Sierra

http://www.scottishdocinstitute.com/films/nae-pasaran/

https://vimeo.com/71027635

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Posted by andrew765 on June 29, 2014 in Documentary, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts, Working Class

Tangled Threads

29 Jun

“Tangled Threads” chronicles labor rights activist Kalpona Akter’s organizing efforts in Bangladesh’s garment industry before and after the Rana Plaza building collapse, which claimed the lives of at least 1,138 garment workers. It does so against the backdrop of two very different worlds: New York’s modeling industry, on the one hand, and Bangladesh’s garment industry, on the other. Produced by STZFilms.

Directed by: Sara Ziff

Sara Ziff is a New York-based filmmaker, fashion model, and labor activist. She co-directed and produced the feature documentary “Picture Me” (2009), which shed light on labor issues in the modeling industry, particularly sexual abuse. Currently she serves as co-founder and executive director of the Model Alliance, a nonprofit labor group for models working in the American fashion industry. Ziff first traveled to Bangladesh in 2012, when she began collaborating with the Bangladesh Center for Worker Solidarity (BCWS) and the International Labor Rights Forum (ILRF) to try to organize workers across fashion’s supply chain.

https://www.facebook.com/stzfilms

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Posted by andrew765 on June 29, 2014 in Arts/Culture, Big Business/Corporations, Cities-Urban, Class, Consumerism, Documentary, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Retail, Safety & Health, Textile Industry, Women, Working Class

Tags: working conditions

Schoolidarity

29 Jun

A sharply aimed film about Wisconsin and Chicago teachers fighting back against the onslaught of anti-union governors and big city mayors willing to sell out public education to the burgeoning power of the for profit charter school movement – which just happens to be mostly union-free.Through the eyes of public school teachers fighting for the benefit of all their students, Schoolidarity tells the interwoven story of the two most significant American workers’ rights struggles of recent years: the weeks-long 2011 mass occupation of the Wisconsin capitol, and the Chicago teachers strike of 2012. Schoolidarity provides a history of the issues surrounding the privatization of urban public schools in the US. By documenting the ascent of the activist teacher caucus CORE, Chicago’s public schools crisis is analyzed through the lens of the assault on public sector unions, where defeats are just as important to study as victories in order to insure education justice for all.

Directed by: Andrew Friend

http://vimeopro.com/insurgentproductions/andrew-friend/video/51703399

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Posted by andrew765 on June 29, 2014 in Children, Cities-Urban, Documentary, Education

Workers Republic

29 Jun

What would you do? Your boss gives you three days’ notice that your workplace is closing. You will be unemployed in a recession, without the severance the law says you deserve. If you are the employees of Republic Windows and Doors… you fight back! For six days in December of 2008, laid-off Chicago factory workers took over their closing workplace, declaring they would not leave until the owners and creditors agreed to pay them the severance they were owed. Republic’s credit line had been cut off by Bank of America, which had just received billions of dollars in federal bank bailout money. These 260 workers decided, “If I don’t fight, I know I’ll lose. If I do fight, at least I stand a chance of winning.” In these revolutionary times, when a new movement has risen from below to occupy Wall Street and expose the greed of bosses and banks, the workers of Republic are a beacon of hope and optimism, a microcosm of how everyday people may be the most qualified to forge a better world.

Directed by: Andrew Friend

http://vimeopro.com/insurgentproductions/andrew-friend/video/30882647

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Posted by andrew765 on June 29, 2014 in Cities-Urban, Class, Documentary, Streaming Online (Youtube, Vimeo), Working Class

Through the Eye of the Needle: The Art of Esther Nisenthal Krinitz

28 Jun

Esther Nisenthal was 15 in October of 1942 when the Jews of her village in Poland were ordered by Nazis to report to a nearby train station. Esther’s story of survival is extraordinary because of her method of storytelling- stitching and embroidering. It comes to us in a series of 36 large fabric collages, intricately embroidered in vivid color, created more than 40 years after the war. They depict one young girl’s eyewitness account of the war, scenes of tragedy and trauma juxtaposed with the exquisite beauty.

Directed by: Nina Shapiro- Perl

http://artandremembrance.org/our-work/film/

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Posted by andrew765 on June 28, 2014 in Arts/Culture, Documentary

Hard Labor

28 Jun

Working conditions on the banana and pineapple plantations of Latin America are tough… here workers tell of trade union persecution, low wages and exposure to pesticides… made for the Make Fruit Fair campaign – to find out more about the social and environmental impacts of pesticides in Costa Rica.

Directed by: Jan Nimmo

http://www.jannimmo.com/PPHL.html