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Tag Archives: Steel Industry

Le Geste Ordinaire (An Ordinary Gesture)

13 Jul

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)

 
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Posted by on July 13, 2012 in Documentary

 

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Valley Town (1940)

13 Jun

27m; U.S.

Director: Willard Van Dyke

Synopsis: This social documentary that premiered at the Steel Workers’ Organizing Committee’s convention in Chicago in May 1940 portrays life in New Castle, Pa., during the Great Depression. Unemployment and poverty transformed the town and its people as automation made its impact in the steel industry. Because of what was considered an anticorporate view, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which funded the film, withdrew it from release and redid the film. Two very different versions, the original director’s cut and the remake, exist.

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

 

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The Valley of Decision (1945)

13 Jun

119m; U.S.

Director: Tay Garnett

Cast: Greer Garson, Gregory Peck and Donald Crisp

Synopsis (IMDB): Mary Rafferty comes from a poor family of steel mill workers in 19th Century Pittsburgh. Her family objects when she goes to work as a maid for the wealthy Scott family which controls the mill. Mary catches the attention of handsome scion Paul Scott, but their romance is complicated by Paul’s engagement to someone else and a bitter strike among the mill workers.

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Drama, Organizing, Romance, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

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Voices from a Steeltown (1983)

13 Jun

 

Director: Tony Buba

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Documentary

 

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Women of Steel (1985)

13 Jun

28m; U.S.

Director: Randy Strothman

Synopsis: Women workers

 
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Posted by on June 13, 2012 in Documentary, Women

 

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Sons of Steel (1934)

07 May

65m; U.S.

Director: Charles Lamont

Cast: Charles Starrett, Polly Ann Young and William Bakewell

Synopsis (IMDB): Chadburne Steel is run by two brothers, old men. They each have different plans for their sons. Curtis (Holmes Herbert) has put Ronald (William Blakewell) through college in style, and gives him a cushy executive job at the plant. John (Walter Walker) has a more twisted plan. He has given his son away at birth to a machinist and his wife. Phillip (Charles Starrett) has worked his way through college tending the furnace and doing rich kids laundry. Upon graduation, he puts Phillip in the lowest paying job possible , with the plan of promoting him to the executive branch in one year.

Both plans are terribly flawed and lead to an industrial accident and a general strike by the steelworkers.

 
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Posted by on May 7, 2012 in Drama, Strikes-Strikebreaking-Lockouts

 

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Steel and Roses (2002)

07 May

Director: John Szostek

Synopsis: Play depicting life in the steel mill.

 
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Posted by on May 7, 2012 in Drama

 

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Struggles in Steel: The Fight for Equal Opportunity (1996)

07 May

58m; U.S.

Director: Tony Buba, Raymond Henderson

Cast: Raymond Henderson, Dennis C. Dickerson and Katrina Heiss

Synopsis (IMDB): This documentary tells the forgotten story of the African-American struggle for equality in the U.S. steel industry (based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania). In a series of interviews intermixed with archival footage and stills, we learn how these workers faced and overcame discrimination that came from white workers, the big steel companies, and even from their own unions.

Contact: www.braddockfilms.com 412-681-5449

 
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Posted by on May 7, 2012 in Blacks, Documentary, Organizing

 

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Struggles in Steel: The Fight for Equal Opportunity (1996)

26 Apr

58m; U.S.

Director: Tony Buba, Raymond Henderson

Cast: Raymond Henderson, Dennis C. Dickerson and Katrina Heiss

Synopsis (IMDB): This documentary tells the forgotten story of the African-American struggle for equality in the U.S. steel industry (based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania). In a series of interviews intermixed with archival footage and stills, we learn how these workers faced and overcame discrimination that came from white workers, the big steel companies, and even from their own unions.

 
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Posted by on April 26, 2012 in Blacks, Documentary, Industrial/Mine/Manufacturing, Labor History, Organizing

 

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Women of Steel (1984)

19 Apr

28m

Producer: Mon Valley Media

Synopsis (Women Make Movies): For women who entered the nation’s steel mills in the 1970s, the mill was a ticket out of traditionally low-paying “women’s jobs” and in some cases, out of poverty. But any gains for women were short lived. WOMEN OF STEEL looks at a turning point in the history of American industry and the disastrous effects widesweeping layoffs and plant closings had on women and families, affirmative action plans, and the union movement. An important historical documentary which has an eerie relevance to women’s place in the American economy in the 1990s.

Website: http://www.wmm.com/filmcatalog/pages/c190.shtml

 
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Posted by on April 19, 2012 in Documentary, Women

 

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