Director: Mario Handler
Synopsis: Documentary on imperialist control of the meat industry and the strike of packing house workers to keep compnay from closing due to competition from US owned meat factories.
Tag Archives: Food Service Industry
Our Daily Bread (Unser Taglich Brot) [2006]
92m; Germany/Austria
Director: Nikolaus Geyrhalter
Synopsis: Effects of industrial food production and high-tech farming
Contact: http://www.ourdailybread.at/jart/projects/utb/website.jart?rel=en&content-id=1130864824947 Distribution for USA, Canada First Run / Icarus Films Gary Crowdus 32 Court Street, 21st Floor USA-Brooklyn NY 11201 t +1-718-488 8900 f +1-718-488 8642 gary@frif.com http://www.frif.com
Over Land (2008)
59m; Canada
Director: Steve Suderman
Synopsis: Family farmers face the threat of closing.
Over Land is an intimate and personal portrait of a family facing a crisis in agriculture. Between 1996 and 2006, despite warnings of an impending food shortage, prices for farm goods dropped to their lowest point in Canadian history, driving many farmers off the land. With a family history of farming spanning generations, the Sudermans now face a challenge that threatens to pull the family apart.
Over Land features original music composed and performed by Dirk Powell.The executive producer is Robin Schlaht. Directed by Steve Suderman.
Contact: steve@gorgeousproductions.ca 306-525-2524 (Home)
Packingtown USA (1969)
Director: Bill Adelman
Synopsis: Shows the great meat strike of 1904 in Chicago
Painting Red Square (2009)
5m; Canada
Director: Max Fraser
Available online
7000 km from Moscow, there’s another Red Square….Witness the struggle of the labour-left in Whitehorse to find a friendly watering hole where they can share a glass with their comrades and debate which shade of red is best. Paint, popcorn and a little beer get spilled along the way.
DVD with extra chapters: 20 mins
Featuring: Del Young and the gang at Red Square.
GENRE: Humour
Tags: Beer, Whitehorse, High Country Inn, TGIF, Paint, Red Square, Labour, Left, Canadian North
Dish: Women, Waitressing and the Art of Service (2010)
58m
Director: Maya Gallus
Synopsis (Women Make Movies): Why do women bring your food at local diners, while in high-end establishments waiters are almost always men? DISH, by Maya Gallus, whose acclaimed GIRL INSIDE (2007) won Canada’s Gemini Award for documentary directing, answers this question in a delicious, well-crafted deconstruction of waitressing and our collective fascination with an enduring popular icon. Digging beyond the obvious, Gallus, who waited tables in her teens, explores diverse dynamics between food servers and customers, as well as cultural biases and attitudes they convey. Her feminist analysis climbs the socio-economic ladder—from the bustling world of lower-end eateries, where women prevail as wait staff, to the more genteel male-dominated sphere of haute cuisine. Astute, amusing observations from women on the job in Ontario’s truck stop diners, Montreal’s topless”sexy restos,” a Parisian super-luxe restaurant, and Tokyo’s fantasy “maid cafés”, as well as male customers’ telling comments, disclose how gender, social standing, earning opportunities, and working conditions intersect in the food service industry.
Website: http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/pages/c808.shtml
General Line (1929) (aka Old and New)
directed by Sergei Eisenstein
121m
The General Line was begun in 1927 as a celebration of the collectivization of agriculture, as championed by old-line Bolshevik Leon Trotsky. Hoping to reach a wide audience, the director forsook his usual practice of emphasizing groups by concentrating on a single rural heroine. Eisenstein briefly abandoned this project to film October: Ten Days That Shook the World, in honour of the 10th anniversary of the Revolution. By the time he was able to return to this film, the Party’s attitudes had changed and Trotsky had fallen from grace. As a result, the film was hastily re-edited and sent out in 1929 under a new title,The Old and the New. In later years, archivists restored The General Line to an approximation of Eisenstein’s original concept. Much of the director’s montage-like imagery—such as using simple props to trace the progress from the agrarian customs of the 19th-century to the more mechanized procedures of the 20th—was common to both versions of the film. (Wikipedia)
The General Line is available for free download at the Internet Archive
The Churning (1976) (aka Manthan)
Directed by Shyam Benegal
India
The word manthan literally means deep contemplation, churning of facts, analysis aimed at solution or conclusion. The film manthan meaning the Churning) is a 1976 Hindi film made by Shyam Benegal, based on a story written jointly by Dr. Verghese Kurien (the Father of the White Revolution in India) and director Shyam Benegal. It is set amidst the backdrop of the White Revolution of India (Operation Flood) which started in 1970, ushering an era of plenty, from a measly amount of milk production and distribution. Aside from the great measurable success that this project was, it also demonstrated the power of “collective might”.
The film traces the origins of the movement through its fictionalized narrative, based around rural empowerment, when a young veterinary surgeon, played by Girish Karnad, a character based on then, National Dairy Development Board (NDDB) chief, the 33 year old Dr. Verghese Kurien,[7] who joined hands with local social worker, Tribhovandas Patel, which led to the setting up a local milk cooperative, in Anand, Gujarat.
In the film, Dr. Rao, comes to a village, to set up a dairy cooperative, which upsets not just the middlemen, who were hitherto exploiting the villagers, but also the age-old feudal structure of the village, soon an uprising is sparked among the local untouchables, which leads to an economic revolution as well. (Wikipedia)
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