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Category Archives: Documentary

Michael Harrington and Today’s Other America, Corporate Power and Inequality (1999)

13 Jul

84m; U.S.

Director: Bill Donovan

Synopsis:
This video is based on the writings and speeches of Michael Harrington, who was the pre-eminent spokesman for socialism in the United States. More than thirty interviews with people as diverse as William F. Buckley, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Gloria Steinem, discuss the important issues raised by Harrington and the Democratic Socialist Party. Ordinary people struggling to earn a living or dependent on food stamps and other social services provide viewers with a glimpse into their every day lives and the choices they must make. Cities shown include Youngstown, Ohio, where 60,000 jobs in the steel and coal industry were lost and never replaced, and San Diego, where farm workers live in shacks without running water or a sewage system. Also discussed is the domination and control of many areas of life in the United States by large corporations and the failure of the public school system and health care. This brief history of socialism in America and the changes in the past few decades in American life presented raise many questions. – http://emro.lib.buffalo.edu/emro/emroDetail.asp?Number=819

 
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Posted by on July 13, 2012 in Biography, Documentary, Labor History

 

The Price of Childhood (2010)

13 Jul

90m; U.S./Nepal

Director: Kan Yan

Synopsis: The story of child laborers in Nepal is a story of ethnic oppression, simple cruelty and remarkable hope. The Price of Childhood seeks to explain this phenomenon through the narratives of those who live with child labor—children, parents, owners, activists, government officials, scholars, and normal folks we meet along the way. In better understanding the situation from these various perspectives, the film aims to assist in improving the lives of those who suffer.

Contact: http://www.priceofchildhood.org/

Trailer

<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/15004778″>Price of Childhood Trailer</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/kan”>Kan Yan</a> on <a href=”http://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a&gt;.</p>

 
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Posted by on July 13, 2012 in Children, Documentary, Organizing

 

1913 Massacre

13 Jul

U.S.

Director: Ken Ross & Louis V. Galdieri

Synopsis: 1913 Massacre follows singer/songwriter Arlo Guthrie to the town of Calumet, a once-thriving mining town on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula still haunted by the tragic events that inspired Woody Guthrie’s ballad, ’1913 Massacre.’

On December 24, 1913, the striking copper miners of Calumet were gathered with their wives and children for a holiday party at the Italian Hall. After the festivities had begun, someone — to this day, no one knows who — yelled Fire!

Despite efforts to keep the Hall under control, panic took hold of the crowd. The miners, their wives and children made a mad rush for the stairs. In the ensuing chaos, seventy-four people were crushed and suffocated to death on the stairway. Fifty-nine of the dead were children. There was no fire.

In the version of events that found its way into Woody Guthrie’s song, the “copper-boss thug-men” had plotted to yell Fire! and were holding the door of Italian Hall shut, so that the miners and their families could not escape.

The town itself is still divided over exactly what happened. And no one can explain why they tore down the Italian Hall in 1984.

1913 Massacre captures the last living witnesses of the 1913 tragedy and reconstructs Calumet’s past from individual memories, family legends and songs, tracing the legacy of the tragedy to the present day, when the town –out of work, out of money, out of luck — still struggles to come to terms with this painful episode from its past.

Contact: http://1913massacre.com/about/

Trailer

 
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Posted by on July 13, 2012 in Documentary, Labor History, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

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Southern Patriot (2010)

13 Jul

77m; U.S.
Director: Anne Lewis & Mimi Pickering
Distributed by California Newsreel and Appalshop

Synopsis: “Anne Braden: Southern Patriot (1924-2006)” is a first person feature documentary completed May 1, 2012. Braden rejected her segregationist, privileged past to become one of the civil rights movement’s staunchest white allies. In 1954 she was charged with sedition by McCarthy-style politicians who played on fears of communism to preserve southern segregation. In 1963 she became one of only five white southerners whose contributions to the movement were commended by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his famed “Letter from Birmingham Jail.” A relentless labor and political organizer, she fought for transformation and liberation throughout her life.  – http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/06/15/18715481.php


Trailer

 
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Posted by on July 13, 2012 in Biography, Blacks, Class, Documentary, Labor History, Organizing, Politics

 

Eyes Wide Open – A Journey Through Today’s Latin America (2010)

13 Jul

110m

Director: Gonzalo Arijon

Synopsis: In his 1971 standard work Open Veins in Latin America, Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano describes the centuries of economic exploitation of his part of the world. Almost 40 years later, Uruguayan documentary filmmaker Gonzalo Arijon reevaluates the situation in Eyes Wide Open — A Journey through Today’s South America. His search takes him from the soybean plantations of the Brazilian Amazon and the tin mines of Bolivia to the deep jungles of Ecuador. Arijon, winner of the Joris Ivens Award in 2007 for Stranded, shows how the current crop of leftist leaders in these countries are attempting to resist the squandering of natural resources by large, international companies. The principal culprits he identifies are the neoliberal ideology and the ensuing wave of privatizations. Arijon’s politically committed film allows the local populations to speak for themselves, interspersing this with archive footage of speeches by the likes of Hugo Chávez (Venezuela), Lula da Silva (Brazil), and Evo Morales (Bolivia). Galeano himself also talks — sometimes in poetic language — about how the rise of socialist governments in the early 21st century is benefitting Latin America, and what more can be done.

 
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Posted by on July 13, 2012 in Documentary, Global Economy, Organizing

 

Confessions of a Sex Tourist

13 Jul

 

Director: Puja Khosdhsorur

 
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Posted by on July 13, 2012 in Documentary, Sex Industry/Sexuality

 

Divide (2011)

13 Jul

22m; U.S.

Director: Michael T. Miller and Maura Ugarte 

Synopsis: When it comes to politics, retired coal miner Sebert Pertee sees one big problem: the rich keep getting richer while working people lose ground. As he canvasses for pro-union candidates in 2008, he finds his community more focused on the race of the Democratic presidential nominee than on their own interests.

In McDowell County, West Virginia, long a union and Democratic Party stronghold, the battle for white working-class voters is taking an ugly turn. As politicians and pundits fan the racial flames, Sebert finds that race-baiting has long been a tried and true tactic to divide the miners. He’s determined to change the conversation, even if it rankles his neighbors. Race-baiting and union values collide in this short film, as Sebert struggles to take the fight to the real enemy.

Contact: http://dividethemovie.com/?page_id=2

Trailer

 
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Posted by on July 13, 2012 in Blacks, Documentary, Politics, Working Class

 

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The CC Boys: A West Virginia Legacy (2006)

13 Jun

30m; U.S.

Director: Robert C. Whetsell and Gerald Milnes

Synopsis: History of the Civilian Conservation Corps in West Virginia.

Contact: Augusta Heritage http://www.augustaheritage.com/store.html

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Documentary, Labor History, Unemployment-Wages

 

The Coca Cola Case (2009)

13 Jun

85m; Colombia/Canada

Director: Carmen Garcia & Germán Gutiérrez

Synopsis: Colombia is the trade union murder capital of the world. Since 2002, more than 470 workers’ leaders have been brutally killed, usually by paramilitaries hired by private companies intent on crushing the unions. Among these unscrupulous corporate brands is the poster boy for American business: Coca-Cola. Talk to Martin Gil: His brother Isidro was killed at point-blank range while working at the Coca-Cola bottling plant in Carepa, because he was part of a union bargaining unit. Like most violent crimes committed against Colombian union leaders, Gil’s murder went unpunished. However, U.S. lawyers Daniel Kovalik and Terry Collingsworth, as well as activist Ray Rogers, stepped in and launched an ambitious crusade against the behemoth Coca-Cola. In an incredible three-year saga, filmmakers German Gutierrez and Carmen Garcia follow these heroes in a legal game of cat and mouse. From Bogota to New York, Guatemala to Atlanta, Washington to Canada, The Coca-Cola Case maintains the suspense of a hard-fought struggle. The lawyers filed several cases at the U.S. federal court against Cola-Cola for murder, abduction and torture committed in Colombia and Guatemala. Thanks to activist Ray Rogers, they also attacked the brand image of the Atlanta-based giant, with the devastating Campaign to Stop Killer Coke, causing dozens of U.S. colleges and universities to remove Coke products from campuses.

Contact: http://www.thecoca-colacase.org/

 

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Documentary, Politics, War

 

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The Concrete Revolution (2004)

13 Jun

62m; China

Director: Xiaolu Guo

Synopsis: A look at life in a rapidly developing new China. Workers recruited from villages into Beijing’s construction industry tell their stories of a culture in flux. Their displacement from loved ones, financial desperation, and hopes are set against the backdrop of the city they are daily transforming in preparation for the 2008 Olympics. Prolific young novelist and filmmaker Xiaolu Guo illustrates with reference to her own migration from a provincial fishing village, music, and stories of her own.

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Cities-Urban, Construction Trades, Documentary, Migrant workers

 
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