An Ontario PC leader is championing U.S.-style labor laws designed to weaken unions, but similar laws in the U.S. have driven down wages and kicked increasing numbers of people out of the middle class. In this documentary, veteran journalist Bill Gillespie heads south (to the US) to find out the real impact of what the conservatives are planning for working people in Ontario.
Directed & written by Bill Gillespie; (19 min ) 2013 Canada
13m; Canada
Director: Michael Connolly
Synopsis: “Stanfordo” searches far and wide for answers to a mystery that continues to baffle hard-working Canadians. How can the federal government and Bank of Canada proclaim an economic recovery when hundreds of thousands of workers are still jobless, and millions are still reeling from one of the worst downturns since the Great Depression?
103m; U.S.
Director: John Carlos Frey
Cast: John Carlos Frey, Michelle Agnew and Anne Betancourt
Synopsis (IMDB): Adam Fields is a rage-filled U.S. Border Patrol Agent who often crosses the line in his job. A member of a vigilante group, Fields decides to go undercover with a hidden camera and cross with a group of undocumented immigrants. His plan goes awry, however, when the group is forced to work for a drug ring. Suddenly, Fields realizes that he has more in common with the migrants and their search for home, family and freedom than he thought.
54m; U.S., 2010
Director: Gilbert Gonzalez/Vivian Price
http://harvestofloneliness.com/
Synopsis: History of bracero program and its value of totally controlled workers to Big Agriculture
Contact: Vivian Price: 562-438-9493 vprice@csudh.edu
52m; U.S.
Director: Line Halvorsen
Synopsis: University Professor Sami Al-Arian targeted by US after 9/11
5m; U.S.
Director: Alex Rivera
Synopsis: Alex Rivera, Why Cybraceros? (5 min. 1997, USA) takes the form of a mock promotional film. It is based on a real promotional film produced in the late 1940’s by the California Grower’s Council, titled Why Braceros? This film was used by the Grower’s Council to defend the use ofbraceros, or temporary Mexican farmhands. I use footage from this old industrial to briefly lay out the history of the Bracero Program in the United States. At the half way point the piece takes a sharp turn as the narrator advocates a futuristic Bracero Program in which only the labor is imported to the United States. The workers themselves are left at home in Mexico, as they Tele-commute to American farms over the high-speed Internet. The narrator explains that in this imagined future there is no difference between rich and poor on the Internet, this is a future in which truly everyone can work from home, even braceros.
This dystopic concept, of a world in which immigrants can labor in America but never live in, or become the responsibility, of American society, is to me not only a bizarre twist on the American Dream; in some ways this is the realization of the American Dream. The United States has always benefited from the low wage (and sometimes free) labor of recent immigrants, who are drawn to America, in part, by The Dream of instant success. Simultaneously, nearly every wave of new immigrants suffers through several decades of intense discrimination, and usually a combination of verbal and physical attacks. TheCybracero, as a trouble free, no commitment, low cost laborer, is the perfect immigrant. The Cybracero is the hi-tech face of the age-old American Dream.
Contact: View here – http://blog.altoarizona.com/blog/2010/04/why-cybraceros-a-mock-promotional-film-by-alex-rivera.html
55m; U.S.
Director: College of Labor and Employment Lawyers
Synopsis: Documentary highlighting labor turbulence in the 60s and 70s through the eyes of former Labor Secretaries Willard Wirtz and Bill Usery. Includes the pilots strike among other events, and shows “vividly how labor secretaries can differ in interests and style, with very different effects on labor.”
Contact: College Executive Director Susan Wan SWan@gibsondunn.com 202-955-8225
123m; Senegal, Africa
Director: Ousmane Sembene
Cast: Thierno Leye, Myriam Niang and Seune Samb
Synopsis (IMDB): It is the dawn of Senegal’s independence from France, but as the citizens celebrate in the streets we soon become aware that only the faces have changed. White money still controls the government. One official, Aboucader Beye, known by the title “El Hadji,” takes advantage of some of that money to marry his third wife, to the sorrow and chagrin of his first two wives and the resentment of his nationalist daughter. But he discovers on his wedding night that he has been struck with a “xala,” a curse of impotence. El Hadji goes to comic lengths to find the cause and remove the xala, resulting in a scathing satirical ending.
58m; U.S.
Director: Robert & Marjory Potts
Synopsis: Biography of the first woman cabinet secretary and “mother” of Social Security, Frances Perkins.
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