Film

Free | by Yale Strom | Eugene Victor Debs is unknown to most people in the United States, yet, he is one of the most important working-class figures in our history. Debs was a railroad worker during the 1877 national railway strike in July. This strike took place when the railroad bosses cut the wages of railroad workers 20%.

Free | Producer: Frosso Tsouka, Director: Leonidas Vardaros | The racist war on immigrants in the US has a long history and this film tells the story of Greek Americans and other immigrants who came to work in the mines of Colorado. This film shows the conditions that these miners and their children worked under and how immigrant workers were terrorized and exploited.

Free | Producer: Frosso Tsouka, Director: Aris Chatzistefanou | Following the film, producer Frosso Tsouka and San Francisco State professor Zeese Papanikolas will discuss the economic and social developments in Greece and the rise of Golden Dawn and other neo-nazi groups.

Free | "Divided We Fall", Director: Katherine Acosta, "The Great Sitdown", BBC Documentary | Scott Houldieson, Vice President UAW 551 Ford Assembly Plant Chicago, Illinois, will introduce the film “The Great Sitdown” and discuss the relevance today.

Free | Producer-Writerr: Elsa Rassbach | Director: Bill Duke (1985 Sundance Film Festival Special Jury Award) | One hundred years ago, a critical struggle was taking place in the slaughterhouses in Chicago to organize a union. This powerful dramatic film focuses on the Polish and African American workers and their conditions as they fight to overcome racism and class hate and greed, in order to build a union of black and white workers.

Free | Director: Françoise Davisse | This documentary film traces the struggle of workers of the PSA plant in Aulnay-sous-Bois, a poor suburb of Paris, against management’s threat to close the plant. The title comes from the slogan of the strikers, “Let’s fight like lions!” The conflict is experienced “from the inside,” showing the workers’ debates and reactions on a day-to-day basis, from 2013-2015.

Free | Director: Ken Loach, Screenwriter: Paul Laverty | I, Daniel Blake by Director Ken Loach and writer Paul Leverty is an important film on the destruction of the lives of workers and their families in the “welfare system”. Blake is a carpenter who has a heart attack and is then forced to go back to work despite his health conditions. While he is fighting for compensation, he befriends a woman and her children who are also being ground up in the Employment and Support Allowance welfare system in the UK.

Free | Director: Jeong-keun Kim | “Island of Shadows” shows the history of Korean Hanjin shipyard workers to defend their health and safety building a union. They built one of the most industrialized countries in the world yet now face the destruction of their lives because of company unions and government corruption.

Free | Director: Jon Silver, with Jon Silver & Frank Barnacke | In September 1985, 1,500 Teamster-organized, mostly immigrant women cannery workers walked out on the two largest frozen food companies in the United States — Watsonville Canning and Richard A. Shaw Frozen Foods in Watsonville, California. This was known as the “frozen food capital of the world”. The workers faced not only companies who wanted major concessions but also a white union leadership who did not speak Spanish and who accused them of not being union members.

Free | Director: Steffi Domike and Nicole Fauteux, and Labor in the Schools | The violence that erupted at Carnegie Steel’s giant Homestead mill near Pittsburgh on July 6, 1892, caused a congressional investigation and trials for treason, motivated a nearly successful assassination attempt on Frick, contributed to the defeat of President Benjamin Harrison for a second term, and changed the course of the American labor movement.

Free | Director: Kazim Kizil | With discussion - The Fight to Defend Academics and Journalists in Turkey: The growth of child labor in Turkey and around the world is exploding. The U.S. invasion of Iraq and Libya, the war in Syria, and now the U.S. supported bombing of Yemen, are creating millions of refugees, including many children forced to work. This film looks at the lives of these children from their own words as child workers. This new film from Turkey by director Kazim Kizil lets the children tell their own stories.

Free | Director: Basia Myszynski and Leonard Myszynski | This biography celebrates Ralph Modjeski, the chief engineer for the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. Modjeski designed bridges that had significant impact on urban development and commerce. The film is a tribute to innovative engineering and to bridge workers during two eras of transit, taking a deeper look at the scientific mind and artistic soul of a Polish-born, Paris-trained immigrant who contributed to the building of a modern America. This is a relevant film that brings awareness about the deteriorating state of our bridges and how communities search for sustainable solutions to maintain, rehabilitate and preserve these critical parts of North America’s infrastructure.

Free | Director: Deirdre Fishel
& The Defense of Our Elderly and Panel of Homecare and Disabled Care Workers | A panel discussion follows after the film: Brett Miller, SEIU 1021; Brad Wiedmaier, SEIU Local 2015 California long term care; moderated by David Duckworth SEIU 1021.

Free | Director: Xiaoyu Qin and Feiyue Wu (Iron Moon), Director: Gyuri Byun (Play On) | The new film from China Iron Moon is a powerful artistic view of the massive industrialization of China through the eyes and words of the workers who have made the new China. At Foxconn, which has over 200,000 workers and produces most of our Apple phones, workers face a life of despair. One of them who committed suicide at the age of 24, left 200 poems of despair, “I swallowed an iron moon…” Using poetry as a tool to chip away at the ice of silence, they and other workers in this film express the hidden stories and life experiences of millions of the workers who are the foundation of the new China.