3m; U.S.
Director: American Federation of Teachers
Synopsis: Documentary on Margaret Haley and the origins of American Federation of Teachers in Chicago, circa 1917.
Category Archives: Documentary
Le Geste Ordinaire (An Ordinary Gesture)
Directed by: Maxime Coton
Release Date: 2010
Duration: 64 minutes
Genre: Documentary
Original language : French
http://www.legesteordinaire.net/
The portrait of a discreet man, of a workman. Director Marc Coton’s portrait of his father. A steelworker in a Belgian factory, he does not talk about his work at home.
The pride of the worker, the hard work in a noisy place, social divide between generations. The echo of a warm silence, which has screened off his family from the racket of the steel industry, where he has been working for 30 years. The story of an uncompleted inheritance, of a silence promise: « My son, you’ll become a different man ». The film leads to reconciliation achieved through the years, through daily acts.
http://vimeo.com/19142198 (french only, no subtitles)
Woodrow Wilson Speaking at Labor Convention (1918?)
6m; U.S.
Synopsis: National Archives footage of Wilson at Labor Convention in Buffalo; footage of Samuel Gompers, head of the American Federation of Labor.
The Citadel: Birth of the LeVeque Tower (2011)
Director: Seth Moherman
Synopsis: Documentary about the building of the LeVeque Tower in Columbus, OH.
Hot Coffee (2011)
86m; U.S.
Director: Susan Saldoff
Synopsis: Seinfeld mocked it. Letterman ranked it in his top ten list. And more than fifteen years later, its infamy continues. Everyone knows the McDonald’s coffee case. It has been routinely cited as an example of how citizens have taken advantage of America’s legal system, but is that a fair rendition of the facts?Hot Coffee reveals what really happened to Stella Liebeck, the Albuquerque woman who spilled coffee on herself and sued McDonald’s, while exploring how and why the case garnered so much media attention, who funded the effort and to what end. After seeing this film, you will decide who really profited from spilling hot coffee.
Contact: http://www.hotcoffeethemovie.com/default.asp
Trailer
Ten Dollars an Hour
The story of an African-American cook working at an all-white fraternity house at the University of Mississippi.
Ten Dollars an Hour (Full Movie: 15m)
Heist: Who Stole the American Dream? (2011)
75m; U.S.
Director: Frances Cause and Donald Goldmacher
Synopsis: HEIST: Who Stole the American Dream? is stunning audiences across the globe, as it exposes the real truth behind the worldwide economic collapse, tracing its origins to a 1971 secret memo entitled Attack on American Free Enterprise. Written over 40 years ago by the future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell, at the behest of the US Chamber of Commerce, the 6-page memo, a free-market utopian treatise, called for a money fueled big business makeover of government through corporate control of the media, academia, the pulpit, arts and sciences and destruction of organized labor and consumer protection groups.
Sound familiar? Today’s crisis and heart stopping headlines can be directly traced to Powell’s real “end game” which was business control of law and politics. Powell’s fingerprints are all over Citizens United, the fateful Supreme Court decision which gave corporations and the super rich unlimited ability to shape our elections with virtually unrestricted donations. HEIST’s step by step detail exposes the systemic implementation of Powell’s memo by BOTH U.S. political parties over the last forty years culminating in the deregulation of industry, outsourcing of jobs and regressive taxation. All of which led us to the global financial crisis of 2008 and the continued dismantling of the American middle class.
Today, politics is the playground of the rich and powerful, with no thought given to the hopes and dreams of ordinary Americans. No other film goes as deeply as HEIST in explaining the greatest heist of our time. Moving beyond the white noise of today’s polarizing media, HEIST provides viewers with a clear, concise and fact-based explanation of how we got into this mess, and what we need to do to restore our representative democracy.
Contact: http://www.heist-themovie.com/index.html
Trailer
Koch Brothers Exposed (2012)
Director: Robert Greenwald
Synopsis: Koch Brothers Exposed is a hard-hitting investigation of the 1% at its very worst. This full-length documentary film on Charles and David Koch—two of the world’s richest and most powerful men—is the latest from acclaimed director Robert Greenwald (Wal-Mart: the High Cost of Low Price, Outfoxed, Rethink Afghanistan). The billionaire brothers bankroll a vast network of organizations that work to undermine the interests of the 99% on issues ranging from Social Security to the environment to civil rights. This film uncovers the Kochs’ corruption—and points the way to how Americans can reclaim their democracy.
Contact: http://www.kochbrothersexposed.com/
Trailer
The Pipe (2010)
80m; Ireland
Director: Risteard Ó Domhnaill
Synopsis: “The most dramatic clash of cultures in modern Ireland, the rights of farmers over their fields, and of fishermen to their fishing grounds, has come in direct conflict with one of the worlds most powerful oil companies. When the citizens look to their state to protect their rights, they find that the state has put Shell’s right to lay a pipeline over their own.
The Pipe is a story of a community tragically divided, and how they deal with a pipe that could bring economic prosperity or destruction of a way of life shared for generations.”
Contact: http://www.thepipethefilm.com/
Trailer
Moment
7m; Turkey
Director: Nazli Bayram
Synopsis: The short is about the increasing speed up of workers who are tied to machine production speeds. The murderous pace puts these workers in a nightmare situation where they lose their limbs, hands and their bodies are destroyed by increasing exploitation on the job
THE LABOR FILM DATABASE 