From GTFF
[edit] Spring term, 2007: "Open Veins of Latin America"
Bring everyone you know, all welcome!
GTFF, the Sociology Film Collective and Friends Present the Winter Labor Series: International Labor and the Global Economy. We are also happy to invite everyone to weekly film series entitled Human Rights in Latin America, which is being held each Thursday. Click the latter link for more information.
Films are every other Wednesday (starting April 2) beginning at 6pm in Willamette Hall, room 100 (UO campus, across from the EMU on 13th Ave.).
(click on the film titles for more information)
[edit] Week one, April 2cond
- Presented by Environmental Policymakers and Planners (EPP)
[edit] Birdsong and Coffee
(56 minutes)
With special appearances by a local organic farmer/activist and by the coordinator of the UO OSPIRG's Fair Trade Coffee Team, which is campaigning to make fair trade, organic, shadegrown coffee available across campus and educate the public about this important issue. For information on campaign meetings and progress, contact Liz Karas, UO OSPIRG Coordinator, liz at ospirgstudents.org. The GTFF has formally endorsed this campaign. The entire event, film and speakers, will be no more than 1.5 hours.
Coffee drinkers will be astonished to learn that they hold in their hands the fate of farm families, farming communities, and entire ecosystems in coffee-growing regions like Costa Rica. In this film we hear from experts and students, from coffee lovers and bird lovers, and-most importantly-from coffee farmers themselves. We learn how their lives and ours are inextricably linked, economically and environmentally. (from olddogdocumentaries.com)
[edit] Week three, April 18th
- Presented by the [iso.breadlandpeace.org/ International Socialist Organization (ISO) - Eugene]
[edit] La Hora de los Hornos (The Hour of the Furnaces)
(260 minutes, parts 1 & 2)
see the imdb listing and the nytimes.com review from 1968 (if you have a sub) as well.
That which is most interesting about the film's form is its relation to the audience. Rather than the conventional finished cinematic product, ready for viewer consumption, the work is conceived as an open-ended militant act, in which the film itself is only important as a "detonator" or "pretext for dialogue." Parts 2 and 3 were structured with pauses in which the projector was to be turned off and discussion was to take place; groups using the film were encouraged to employ their own visual or sound accompaniment and to cut or add to the film as they saw fit. Of course, the very context in which the film was shown contributed to the sense of audience participation. Because the film was illegal, no one in the audience was a mere spectator: "On the contrary, from the moment he decided to attend the showing, from the moment he lined himself up on this side by taking risks and contributing his living experience to the meeting, he became an actor, a more important protagonist than those who appeared in the films. The situation turned everyone into accomplices of the act." (from filmreference.com
[edit] Week five, May 2cond
- Presented by the [iso.breadlandpeace.org/ International Socialist Organization (ISO) - Eugene]
[edit] La Hora de los Hornos (The Hour of the Furnaces)
1966-68 (260 minutes, parts 2 & 3)
This brilliant documentary launched the Third Cinema movement and put Latin American cinema on the international map. It combines new and old film footage to explain the history of Argentina and the wave of revolutionary fervor that swept many countries in Latin America. From the Spanish invaders to modern military concerns financed by foreign powers, this feature examines racism, social upheaval, native massacres and the precarious political situations that could change in the wake of revolutionary rebellion. In a noted sequence, director Solanas juxtaposed images of American commericalism and scenes from a slaughterhouse with snatches of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band playing over top. The scene climaxes with a rapid staccato montage of starving children, bleeding cows and Coca-Cola signs matched with the sound of machine gun fire. The sequence is as thrilling as it is haunting--a masterpiece of pure cinema. This feature took the Critics Award at the Pesaro New Cinema Festival. (from nytimes.com)
[edit] Week seven, May 14th
- Presented by Irmary Reyes-Santos, professor in Ethnic Studies, will facilitate the viewing of the film and a discussion after.
[edit] Brincando El Charco (Portrait of a Puerto Rican)
1994 (55 minutes)
Refreshingly sophisticated in both form and content, BRINCANDO EL CHARCO contemplates the notion of “identity” through the experiences of a Puerto Rican woman living in the US. In a wonderful mix of fiction, archival footage, processed interviews and soap opera drama, BRINCANDO EL CHARCO tells the story of Claudia Marin, a middle-class, light-skinned Puerto Rican photographer/videographer who is attempting to construct a sense of community in the US. Confronting the simultaneity of both her privilege and her oppression, BRINCANDO EL CHARCO becomes a meditation on class, race and sexuality as shifting differences. (from wmm.com)
AWARDS, FESTIVALS, & SCREENINGS
- Latin American Studies Association Conference, Merit Selection Award
- San Juan Cinema Fest, Audience Award
- Toronto, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles Lesbian and Gay Film Festivals
If you are not satisfied with the racist cartoon images of Puerto Ricans seen in most movies and television then you should most definitely see this film. --Rick Kearn- El Hispano
[edit] Week nine, May 30th
- Presented by Analisa Taylor, professor in Romance Languages (Spanish).
[edit] Letters from the Other Side: A documentary by Heather Courtney
2005 (74 minutes)
“A much-needed examination of the collateral damage of illegal immigration ... sensitive ... effective and emotionally potent.” – John Anderson, Variety
“Impressively thorough ... painful and honest.” – Austin Chronicle
A U.S. Homeland Security official watches a video of Laura, a Mexican woman whose husband died in 2003 along with 18 others in the worst immigrant smuggling case in U.S. history. "How many more deaths does it take for the U.S. government to do something?" she asks.
LETTERS FROM THE OTHER SIDE interweaves video letters carried across the U.S.-Mexico border by the film's director with the personal stories of women left behind in post-NAFTA Mexico.
Director Heather Courtney interacts with her subjects through her unobtrusive camera, providing an intimate look at the lives of the people most affected by today's failed immigration and trade policies. Her use of video letters provides a way for these women to communicate with both loved ones and strangers on the other side of the border, and illustrates an unjust truth - as an American she can carry these video letters back and forth across a border that these women are not legally allowed to cross.
The U.S. House and Senate just passed a bill to build a 700-mile fence along the U.S.-Mexico border, an enforcement-only bill that will only lead to more deaths at the border and do nothing to address the complex issue of immigration. LETTERS provides the human context that has been missing in all the political rhetoric. Focusing on a side of the immigration story rarely told by the media or touched upon in our national debate, LETTERS gives voice to those who deserve to be heard, painting a complex portrait of families torn apart by economics, communities dying at the hands of globalization, and governments incapable or unwilling to do anything about it.
LETTERS is a co-production of Front Porch Films and KERA Dallas/Ft. Worth, in association with the Independent Television Service (ITVS). (excerpt from newday.com)
[edit] Winter term--International Labor and the Global Economy
Bring everyone you know, all welcome!
GTFF, the Sociology Film Collective and Friends Present the Winter Labor Series: International Labor and the Global Economy. We are also happy to invite everyone to the Ethnic Studies Film Series on alternating Wednesday nights. The latter film series deals with crucial and related isues and is entitled: “Perspectives on Globalization: Culture, Labor, Politics."
Each Wednesday films are either other from 7-9pm in room 180 PLC (Prince Lucien Campbell) or 6-9pm in room 240A McKenzie Hall (Ethnic Studies, preceded by an introduction)
(click on the film titles for more information)
[edit] January 24th
- Presented by the UO Cultural Forum (7-9pm in room 180 PLC [Prince Lucien Campbell])...
====The Ground Truth: After the Killing Ends==== 2006 (72 minutes) The military has long realized that war is fought on many fronts; the battle at home-getting the media to represent the war as a battle between clearly identifiable sides and include a transparent understanding of its mission-is as essential to victory as actions on the battlefield. Thus, Patricia Foulkrod's resonant examination of the war in Iraq is both a timely and welcome contrast that offsets the omnipresent flag-waving portraits of heroism and glory that have so dominated recent war reportage. Even more critically, the Ground Truth: After the Killing Ends doesn't simply inquire into policies about Iraq, but also scrutinizes the effects of modern warfare, especially on its combatants. The film follows the process of deception that is as intrinsic to the military as guns and MREs (meals ready to eat)-from recruitment to basic training, from battlefield orders to postwar support for wounds, both physical and emotional. And although after Vietnam post-traumatic stress disorder was widely recognized as a consequence of war, especially one where combatants and missions are cloudy, the military has steadfastly refused to acknowledge it or admit that it's happening again. The Ground Truth is an honest and powerful representation of what killing does to soldiers and the bravery it requires to come home and tell the truth.
[edit] Jan. 31st
- Hosted by Ethnic Studies (6-9pm in room 240A McKenzie Hall)...
- Title: Transnational Capital and Governance
- Facilitator: Prof. Michael Hames-García
====Life and Debt==== 2001 (86 minutes)
Life & Debt is a woven tapestry of sequences focusing on the stories of individual Jamaicans whose strategies for survival and parameters of day-to-day existence are determined by the U.S. and other foreign economic agendas. By combining traditional documentary telling with a stylized narrative framework, the complexity of international lending, structural adjustment policies and free trade will be understood in the context of the day-to-day realities of the people whose lives they impact. (Source: www.lifeanddebt.com)
[edit] February 7th
- Presented by Environmental Policymakers and Planners (EPP) (7-9pm in room 180 PLC [Prince Lucien Campbell])….
Download the Flier ====Justice on the Table==== 2003 (25 minutes)
Reveals the shocking truth about oppressed people in Oregon who farm the food you put on your table. Contains interviews of Oregon farmworkers and PCUN organizers and addresses organizing barriers. PCUN (Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste) translates into Northwest Treeplanters and Farmworkers United. The life expectancy of Oregon farmworkers is only half that of the general population! A significant reason is cancer caused by pesticide exposure, although the film does not address pesticide exposure.
====The Wrath of Grapes==== 1987 (15 minutes)
Short but sweet organizing video produced by Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers in 1987 to rally the public behind legislation in CA to protect farmworkers and their families from unnecessary and dangerous pesticide exposure. Contains interviews of families with children disfigured or cancer-ridden because of pre-natal pesticide exposure. Pregnant women working in the fields are not informed about the extreme danger that pesticides pose to their children. Also addresses pesticide pollution in the larger community.
====For Export Only: Pesticides==== 1983 (57 minutes)
This film has won many awards and convinced the UN to create an international monitoring system, although many severe problems still exist. Focuses on the appalling, massive export of pesticides from the U.S. and Europe, where these extremely dangerous and persistent chemicals have been banned for some time, to desperate third world communities. Reveals the suffering of children around the world merely for the profit of large chemical companies. Pesticides have been and still are marketed to these communities, unaware of any danger or ban in the exporting country, who use the chemicals because they are told that these chemicals will allow them to feed themselves. Although there is truth to this claim in the short-term, the long-term consequences are catastrophic, of which the chemical companies and U.S. government are well-aware. Large agribusiness in developing countries uses lots of pesticides, fails to educate workers about the risks and precautions, and displaces the traditional food staples with export crops demanded by wealthy countries, such that the people are now poisoned and have less food to eat. Exporting dangerous pesticides ultimately comes back to haunt Americans who eat the produce laden with residues of these chemicals, which scientists have shown are harmful to children. The film shows a few successful communities, including one in Ghana, who have been educated about the harm that pesticides cause and have abandoned or altered their use of pesticides. Touches on the reality that pesticide use ironically begets more pests, as only resistant pests survive, and predators of the pests are eliminated.
[edit] Feb. 14th
- Hosted by Ethnic Studies (6-9pm in room 240A McKenzie Hall)...
- Title: Faces of Global Migrant Labor
- Facilitator: Prof. Lamia Karim
====My Migrant Soul==== 2000 (35 minutes)
A video documentary by Yasmine Kabir, is about Shahjahan Babu, a young migrant worker from Bangladesh, who left for Malaysia in search of work. Having sold his only piece of property and virtually mortgaging his life - the young man arrives in the host country to experience only disillusionment, misery and frustration.
====Fun@Sun: Making of a Global Workforce==== 2006 (32 minutes)
Fun@Sun depicts another typical feature of the Indian outsourcing industry––'soft skills' training programs, including communication skills and cross-cultural sensitivity classes. The film depicts multiple ways in which 'culture' is manufactured, appropriated and deployed in the new global workplace.
[edit] February 21st
- Presented by the GTFF (7-9pm in room 180 PLC [Prince Lucien Campbell])...
====Queimada! (aka Burn!, aka The Mercenary) by Gillo Pontecorvo==== 1969 (115 minutes)
- A Caribbean island in the mid-1800's. Nature has made it a paradise; man has made it a hell. Slaves on vast Portuguese sugar plantations are ready to turn their misery into rebellion - and the British are ready to provide the spark. They send agent William Walker (Marlon Brando) on a devious three-part mission: trick the slaves into revolt, grab the sugar trade for England...then return the slaves to servitude. Gillo Pontecorvo, the acclaimed director of The Battle of Algiers, explores colonialism and insurrection in the searing epic Burn!. Both visually and narratively stunning, Burn! glows with the fires of Pontecorvo's unique filmmaking genius. Genius is also evident in Brando's complex, intelligent portrayal of a man who is both gentleman and scoundrel, revolutionary and colonialist. And Ennio Morricone's (The Untouchables, The Mission) haunting music memorably underscores the almost overwhelmingly powerful story.
- Far more than Algiers, with its virtual equation of the vast violence committed by the French with that of the Algerians, Burn! was a courageous film for Pontecorvo to make. There are few films as passionate or as uncompromising about the real workings and nature of imperialism as a world order, nor a film which identifies so feelingly with the victims of neo-colonial rule. Not since Eisenstein has a film so explicitly and with such artistry sounded a paen to the glory and moral necessity of revolution. Even had United Artists not attempted to sabotage Burn!, it would be a film deserving wider viewing and critical attention.
[edit] Feb. 28th
- Hosted by Ethnic Studies (6-9pm in room 240A McKenzie Hall)...
- Title: Interrogating Culture
- Facilitator: Prof. David Li
====Life Show==== 2005 (1 hr. 47 minutes)
Adapted from a famous novel written by novelist Chi Li, Life Show tells the story of Lai Shuang Yang (Tao Hong), who runs a small restaurant in an old quarter of Shanghai. While she isn't a mother, she is in many ways the keeper of her family, struggling to keep her brother out of trouble with drugs and most importantly trying to regain possession of the family home that was lost during the Chinese Cultural Revolution.
[edit] March 7th
- Presented by the GTFF (7-9pm in room 180 PLC [Prince Lucien Campbell])...
====Maquilapolis==== 2006 (60 minutes) Produce by California Newsreel
'"All who care about social justice, the environment, women’s rights and labor rights, should view this film. Maquilapolis should be screened in theaters, union halls, college campuses, and at the annual meeting of the World Social Forum. Many consider the U.S.-Mexico border to be “the laboratory of the future.” In Maquilapolis the border is also the site where global capitalism is facing profound resistance. Maquilapolis is one of the most authoritative documentaries on cross-border organizing."' -Rosa-Linda Fregoso
'"Maquilapolis is a wonderful fusion of expose and imagination, delivering an unprecedented look into the realities of life in the border communities where the maquiladoras reign. Made in collaboration with the women whose lives center on these secretive factories, Maquilapolis succeeds in crossing borders and peering around corners to capture how the women caught in the contradictions of global capital understand their own positions. A key case study for anyone interested in transnational realities -- and subjectivities."' -B. Ruby Rich
[edit] March 14th
- Presented by the Eugene Local of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) (7-9pm in room 180 PLC [Prince Lucien Campbell])...
====Betrayed: The Story of Canadian Merchant Seamen==== 2003 (56 minutes)
"'Betrayed is a must see for those want to understand the ruthless globalization of one of the most important industries today -- international shipping."' - Mark Achbar, Director/Producer The Corporation
'"Elaine Brière sets the romance of the sea beside the reality of government duplicity and corporate greed in a film that should be seen by every Canadian who cares about our past and our future"' - Mark Leier - Director, Center for Labour Studies, Simon Fraser Univesity
'"Brière drags an important piece of our past back out of the memory hole, and shows why it’s still relevant today."' - Goeff Olson, The Vancouver Courier, November 22,2004
[edit] Fall term: Labor in the U.S.--The struggles and the tools
The GTFF and sociology film collective present: Labor in the U.S.: The struggles and the tools. Join us and be inspired by those who have taken on the biggest industry bosses, banks and backward politics. Also, learn from those involved in struggles today and draw lessons for the challenges we face in our own struggles for dignity, decent work, emancipation and democracy in the economic, as well as the political spheres.
Bring everyone you know, all welcome!
Wednesday nights at 7pm on the U of O campus in room 180 PLC (Prince Lucien Campbell)
(click on the film titles for more information)
[edit] Week one (Sept. 27, 2006): DOUBLE FEATURE
====Restoring employee rights is good for America==== 1993 (20 min). In response to the undermining of the rights of employees to organize unions and bargain collectively during the Reagan-Bush years, The Campaign for Employee Rights seeks to restore these rights to working people through a comprehensive reform of U.S. labor law.
[edit] American Dream
1990 (102 minutes). Barbara Kopple's disturbing account of the protracted strike of the employees of the Hormel meat-packing plant in Austin, Minnesota, in 1984 is set against the backdrop of the Reagan administration's demolition of the nation's air traffic controllers union, a move that would help create the worst climate for organized labor since the 19th century. Doubtless emboldened by this decision, Hormel management announced a wage cut from $10.69 to $8.50 an hour, along with a 30% cut in benefits, despite a banner year in which the company posted a $29 million profit. Against the advice of Lewie Anderson, director of meat packing for the United Food and Commercial Workers International, the local union, P-9, elects to strike and hires New York consultant Ray Rogers, a specialist in assisting unions to strategize. As weeks turn into months it becomes evident that Rogers is a skillful flack and motivational trainer but understands little about the complex negotiation he has helped set in motion. A fitting companion piece to the director's earlier HARLAN COUNTY, USA, this Oscar-winning exposé is a tour de force of documentary filmmaking, unfolding the inexorable tragedy of the Hormel workers with compassion and an acute eye for the revelatory detail.
[edit] Week two (Oct. 4, 2006)
====Salt of the Earth==== 1953 (94 minutes). Banned!
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Included in the prestigious National Film Registry of the Library of Congress, "Salt of the Earth" represents a milestone in the history of American movies. It was produced, written, and directed by filmmakers who were still blacklisted when the film was made in 1953, during the anticommunist witch-hunts that plagued Hollywood (and the entire country) at the height of the McCarthy era. While the filmmakers faced misguided suspicion of promoting anti-American sentiments, the film was financed in part by the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers, which strongly supported this powerful social-realist drama about a strike by Mexican American zinc miners in New Mexico. Featuring a prominent role for blacklisted actor Will Geer (later famous as Grandpa on TV's The Waltons), the story intensifies when the strikers are forced to stop picketing and their wives take up the cause. Focusing on one struggling couple to illustrate its themes of individual dignity and human rights, the film was released in only 13 theaters nationwide in 1954, receiving a majority of highly positive reviews. Still, Salt of the Earth was surrounded by controversy before, during, and after its production, and it was widely misinterpreted as a call for social revolution. It remained largely unseen in America until the 1960s, but this boldly independent film has since been duly recognized for its artistic and social importance.
[edit] Week three (Oct. 11, 2006)
[edit] With Babies and Banners: Story of the Women’s Emergency Brigade
1989 (45 minutes). The victory of the Great General Motors Sit-Down Strike in Flint, Michigan, in 1937 was the key to the success of the CIO's drive for industrial unionism. The now classic With Babies And Banners presents the untold story of the women--the working women, wives, mothers and sisters--who became the backbone of the strike. The empowered women also fought, during and after the strike, within their communities and organized labor for the same equality feminists continue to struggle for today. Forty years later, nine of these women reunite and dramatically show the relevance of their experience for working men and women now."...a moving presentation of network building and support systems forty years ago. Marvelous, newly empowered women, developing confidence and pride, emerge as role models to serve as inspiration for us all." –American Association of University Women
[edit] Week four (Oct. 18, 2006)
[edit] A. Philip Randolph: For Jobs & Freedom
http://www.newsreel.org/site_images/aphilipi.jpg
1996 (87 minutes). Ask most people who led the 1963 March on Washington and they'll probably tell you Martin Luther King, Jr. But the real force behind the event was the man many call the pre-eminent black labor leader of the century and the father of the modern civil rights movement: A. Philip Randolph.
Randolph believed that economic rights was the key to advancing civil rights. A. Philip Randolph: For Jobs and Freedom takes viewers on a tour of 20th-century civil rights and labor history as it chronicles Randolph's legendary efforts to build a more equitable society.It is a shame for anyone to go any longer without learning about this crucial history. This documentary is a brilliant introduction and it is very exciting.
[edit] Week five (Oct. 25, 2006)
[edit] Silkwood
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1983 (131 minutes). The Silkwood story became the basis for the movie Silkwood, starring Meryl Streep with Kurt Russell and Cher. Silkwood is a powerful movie, but the actual events surrounding the death of 28-year-old Karen Silkwood are even more riveting, and tragic, and far more complex: A union activist, alarmed by the serious health risks in a nuclear fuels production plant, investigates the dangers. She uncovers a frightening cover-up by the company. Her home is mysteriously contaminated with radioactive plutonium. While taking revealing documents to a confidential meeting with a union staff representative and an investigative reporter, she’s killed in an auto accident under highly suspicious circumstances.
That, in brief, is the story of Karen Silkwood, still remembered as a union martyr 25 years after her death. Silkwood, an employee of the Kerr McGee Company’s Cimarron plutonium plant in Crescent, Okla., was a member of Local 5-283 of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union.
[edit] Week six (Nov. 1, 2006)
[edit] The River Ran Red
http://home.earthlink.net/~steffidomike/laborhistory/images/RRR.gif
1993 (60 minutes). The famous moment occurred on July 6, 1892, on the banks of the Monongahela River in Homestead, Pennsylvania . . . Invading Pinkerton agents, aroused townspeople and workers, a bloody confrontation, the burning of the barges, a gauntlet of women and children. Seven workers dead, three dead Pinkertons. Later, still in July, came the military occupation of the town and a failed assassination attempt on the company's chairman. In the fall, and in succeeding months, the strike leaders were charged with murder, and though they were acquitted, their union was broken and suppressed.
After the events in Homestead 1892, unions were effectively outlawed in American steel towns; free speech and association disappeared until the mid-1930s in the communities as well as the workplace. In the 1880s and 1890s, Homestead workers demanded the right to participate in decisions about workplace change. A key issue, as it is for workers today, was the pace and impact of new technology. Workers in Europe in the 1990s increasingly have a legal right to be consulted in decisions as their jobs are impacted by technology. Such participation existed in the Homestead plant from 1889-1892 - during the union's last contract before the lockout. After the battle, workers at Homestead, and in American industry generally, lost the right to consult on technical change. Homestead 1892 crystallizes a range of issues still relevant at the start of the 21st Century.
[edit] Week seven (Nov. 8, 2006)
[edit] Voices from the Front Lines
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You’ve got to see this real-life example of labor taking a more holistic view of its own power to meet its own needs. What should the relationship be between labor and environmental justice? These workers, activist and other community members have not only thought this through, but have acted with great force. Beautiful!
“Voices from the Front Lines" highlights an emerging anti-corporate tendency within the environmental movement, focusing on the innovative and successful campaigns of the Los Angeles based Labor/Community Strategy Center. "Voices..." portrays the Strategy Center's origins in the battle to keep the General Motors plant in Van Nuys, CA, from closing, its WATCHDOG organizing in L.A.'s oil refinery ravaged harbor communities, its battles with the South Coast Air Quality Management District, its international solidarity with Acción Ecológica in Ecuador, and the mass organizing of its Bus Riders Union. "Voices...," with its compelling footage of East L.A., South Central, the 1992 L.A. rebellion, and the Texaco refinery explosion in Wilmington, offers a class and race based perspective on the evolving environmental justice movement.
Students at high schools, community colleges, undergraduate and graduate schools are taking courses on social movements and on black, Latino, women's, and environmental studies. These students want to debate public policy and social change based on real-life organizations with a history of direct organizing and a solid analytical foundation. Too often, they receive only abstract interpretations of social movements, filtered through the eyes of academic observers. In "Voices...," organizers drawn from the ranks of the classes most directly affected by environmental injustice speak out powerfully and effectively for themselves.
[edit] Week eight (Nov. 15, 2006)
[edit] Out at Work
1997 (56 minutes). The documentary PBS refused to show because of union and gay rights groups’ backing. It is a great study of issues that affect all people in the U.S. and it is especially telling that PBS refused to show this one, but has no problem with the corporate funding of many other films. Is it really the funding or is it the fact that one of the most socially acceptable forms of discrimination that still dominates U.S. politics is homophobia, not to mention the rampant anti-labor campaign that is a perennial feature of the national, mainstream dialogue.
Featuring interviews with three very different workers who were involved in protesting the Cracker Barrel restaurant's anti-gay policies, this documentary offers food for thought on discrimination against homosexuals and lesbians in the workplace. The film was made between 1991 and 1995 and first centers on Cheryl Summerville, a lesbian who abruptly lost her job with the restaurant chain after they enacted policies that required employees to "demonstrate normal heterosexual values." She was one of 17 gays who fired from the restaurant in 1991 when such anti-gay policies were legal in 41 states. Ron Woods, an electrician at a Detroit auto-manufacturing plant heard about the case and began trying to get the United Auto Workers' to launch a formal protest against Cracker Barrel. In so doing, he revealed his own homosexuality and this led to ostracism and threats. Nat Keitt had a great job at the Bronx city library until he began lobbying for his health organization to cover costs for his live-in companion who was suffering from AIDS related illnesses.
[edit] Week nine (Nov. 22, 2006): NO FILM- school closed for Thanksgiving
[edit] Week ten (Nov. 29, 2006)
[edit] Harlan County, U.S.A
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1976 (103 minutes). A man crouches and pokes at what first appears to be a wad of chewed-up pink bubble gum on the ground. "That's what a scab will do to ya, by God," he says, his voice quavering with emotion. The pink wad is brain tissue from a striker shot in the head by a strikebreaker. That's one of the harsh realities of Harlan County USA. Barbara Kopple's documentary camera looks at this forgotten corner of 1970s America, the site of some of the bitterest labor violence in American history. It's hard to believe that some 40 years after the Depression, there were parts of Appalachia that were hardly better off than they were in the 1930s. The care-worn faces of the miners and their families speak volumes. They're the tough, proud faces of people struggling to make a living the way that their parents and grandparents did in generations past. Kopple skillfully weaves archival footage and traditional labor songs through the film to give a historical perspective to the strike against Eastover Mining Company. Above and beyond the labor issues, the film takes a hard look at the living conditions, health issues, and poverty faced by Harlan's residents, the human toll that goes along with the mining industry. The tense confrontations between Eastover's slimy security goons and the unionizers are particularly gripping, with the threat of violence hanging thick in the air. Sometimes ugly, always absorbing, this is an important, enlightening social record, one that serves the highest calling of the documentary filmmaker's art.
The accolades and awards for this documentary go on and on. A famous struggle became the subject of an internationally famous film. In 1991, Harlan County USA was named to the National Film Registry by Congress and designated an American Film Classic. Harlan County USA was recently restored and preserved by the Women’s Preservation Fund and the Academy Film Archive, and was featured as part of the Sundance Collection at the Sundance Film Festival in 2005.
[edit] Week eleven (Dec. 6, 2006)
[edit] The fight in the fields: Cesar Chavez and the farmworkers struggle
1997 (115 minutes). More than two years in the making, The Fight in the Fields: Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers' Struggle is the first film to cover the full arc of Cesar Chávez' life.
This is the story of Cesar Chavez, the charismatic founder of the United Farmworkers Union and the history and impact of the movement that he inspired. The heart of the UFW, Chavez remains one of the most important Latino leader in this country's history. The activities he and his dedicated organizers led inspired the Chicano activism of the 1960's and '70's, helping to create a Latino civil rights movement. Film includes archival footage, newsreels and present-day interviews with activists, politicians and Chavez family members.
[edit] Spring term
TBA
