FilmWorks United

July 10 (Friday) 5:30, 7:30 PM $5.00 Roxie Theatre - 3117 16th St., at Valencia, SF
5:30 Show
La Huelga, The Struggle of UFW (18 m) 2009 By Alex Ivany
Alex Ivany as a high school student started this project for Santa Cruz High, fascinated by the achievements of Chavez and the early days of the United Farm Workers Movement.
alexivany@baymoon.com
www.reelwork.org/schedule.htm
Bracero (57 min.) 2008 By Patrick Mullins
The Bracero Program, which operated in the US between 1942-1964 has relevance today as business and some unions are pushing this again. Otherwise known as the “Guest Worker” program, this allowed for workers to be brought into the US and to work under specific farm owners and others. Their exploitative conditions were intensified as a result of this program. This film gives a real life look at the workers and how the program really worked. This documentary puts a human face on the lives of these “guest workers” and raises the issue of why unions should continue to support this type of program.
pmullins@utep.edu
www.cherrylaneproductions.com
7:30 Show
Ironeaters (85 min.) Bangladesh by Shaheen Dill-Riaz
The Ironeaters is a beautiful film about the workers in the ship dismantling industry. This industry, which now employs three million workers has replaced the jute textile industry which was destroyed by the IMF and World Bank in order to eliminate competition to the international chemical companies.
The workers in the Ironeaters face a brutal exploitation at 70 cents a day, and deadly health and safety conditions, which destroy their bodies and their lives. This non-union industry, with contractors pushing the workers to get the job done regardless of the costs, and they are deadly as they disfigure many of the workers. The systemic poverty used by the contractors drives these workers to desperation. This is the first film to show the workers in this industry and the work they do as “the rope carriers go home without a penny of wages.”
info@lemmefilm.de
www.eisenfresser-film.de
www.lemmefilm.de
http://edition.cnn.com/video/#/video/international/2009/06/21/chiou.ecosolutions.ship.recycle.cnn
Silicosis (Silicozis) (45 min.) 2009 Turkey
by Ethem Özgüven, Petra Holzer, Selçuk Erzurumlu
At one end of the chain of distribution, there are the popular blue jeans. While on the other end are the unregistered workshops. The workers who make these jeans have contracted life threatening lung diseases. The expensive stonewashed jeans shine while the worker’s lives fade away from their dangerous work.
petramh@gmail.com

July 10 (Friday) 7:00 PM (Donation) Niebyl Proctor Library -6501 Telegraph Ave., Oakland
Tanaka-San Will Not Do Calisthenics (75 min.) 2008 Australia
By Maree Delofski
This striking film shows the struggle of Japanese Oki Electric Manufacturing worker and singer Tetsuro Tanaka. Tanaka refused to accept the militarization of his job through calisthenics and the mind control of the company. As result, he is harassed and fired by the company. Rather than giving up, he decides to sing every day in front of the factory. He has continued this battle for 28 years, and in the process, has exposed the nature of this corporate management system. Tanaka has been to LaborFest before, and his music continues to ring out. His words “Never import the corporate fascism of Japan!” continue to have meaning.
http://www.tanakafilm.com
http://www.din.or.jp/~okidentt/eigohome.htm
http://unionsong.com/u218.html
Race To The Bottom (20 m) US 2008
By Jonathan King, Michael Hamm
This story is about the 2,000 independent truck drivers working at the Port of Oakland, The film gives us a look into the lives of the drivers and their struggles to earn a living wage, support their families, and stay healthy as they do their jobs, transporting goods in and out of the port. It also shows their efforts to build a community coalition to protect their jobs and their health and make their voices heard.
jonathanrk@hotmail.com

July 11 (Saturday) 2:00, 5:00, 730 PM $5.00 Roxie Theatre - 3117 16th St., at Valencia, SF
2:00 Show
Heart of the Factory (129 min.) 2008 Argentina
By Virna Molina and Ernesto Ardito
The Ceramic Zanon - Fasinpat workers work in one of the most important and largest ceramic factories of South America. As a result of the owners plan to close it, the workers occupied the factory and are now running the factory themselves under workers control without bosses or owners. New threats emerged as they struggle against a political and economic system that tries to crush them and their control of the factory.
5:00 Show
The Big Sell Out (94 min.) Germany
By Florian Optiz
This film exposes the role of the IMF and World Bank by showing the effect of their policies on the lives of working people from around the world. They include an UK RMT railroad activist fighting to protect the UK railroad system, a Bolivian community activists fighting water privatization and a South African activist fighting to keep the lights on in Soweto which leads to a fight against the ANC government. This international film draws the connection of the policies of global capitalism of privatization and deregulation to the destruction of public services and the ruination of the environment and the people of the world.
flopitz@spring-productions.de
http://www.thebigsellout.org
Swiped? (6 min.) US By Fivel Rothberg
Through a New York City cab driver, this short documentary investigates how cabbies are faring under the TLC’s “Technology Enhancement” program.
fivel.rothberg@gmail.com
www.fivelrothberg.com
7:30 Show
Workers Dreams (50 min.) 2007 Vietnam
By Tran Phuong Thao (With English subtitles)
Thousands of young women now work in foreign owned factories in Vietnam for approximately $2 a day. This film shows the lives of these young rural women who end up in a Japanese Canon factory in the Hanoi area. Hoping to make a new life with many consumer goods around them they are ground up in the capitalist system and their dreams and illusions about the new Vietnam are crushed.
Bill Snyder's review
9 Star Hotel (78 min.) 2006
(Please note: This program has been changed from the printed schedule)
By Ido Haar
In Israel's occupied territories, thousands of Palestinians work illegally as construction laborers. After an arduous and dangerous journey, loaded with blankets and bags, they cross the hills to the places where they can find employment. At night, they sleep on the hillcrests in improvised huts and coffin-like sleeping cubicles, a stark contrast to the luxury apartment complexes they build by day.
In 9 Star Hotel, the filmmakers follow Ahmed and Muhammad, they share food, belongings and stories, and live under the constant threat of getting arrested. With raw, handheld images, this disconcerting yet touching film documents friendship, nostalgia and the uncompromising urge to survive.
Edeb Production

July 12 (Sunday) 2:00, 5:00, 7:30 PM $5.00 Roxie Theatre - 3117 16th St., at Valencia, SF
2:00 Show
Greening of Southie (72 min.) 2008
By Ian Cheney & Curt Ellis
This film shows the role of skilled union labor in building an environmental friendly building in South Boston. Workers bring the building into being with the latest technologies and environmental friendly products. Contained in this construction process is making the most points for environmental standards required to get a top rating. For the workers and developers, the time and cost including ripping out new products that haven’t worked is a letdown. At the same time union building trades workers lament that with their income they themselves can’t afford to live in their own Boston neighborhood “Southie.” www.greeningofsouthie.com
3 Minutes Videos (30 min.) 2008 Japan
This collection of 3 minutes videos gives a spice of the lives of Japanese working people. The Japan LaborFesta has brought together films about the lives of workers and their families as they fight the increasing exploitation and downsizing.
www.labornetjp.org (in Japanese)
5:00 Show
Porto Marghera-The Last Firebrands (52 min.) Italy 2004
By Manuela Pellarin (English subtitles)
40th Anniversary of Italy’s “Hot Autumn.”
A film about petrochemical workers who took matters into their own hands in the giant industrial zone engulfing Venice. Porto Marghera documents autonomous workers and their experiences from the point of view of the worker-activists themselves.
“The mass refusal of literally toxic work forced hours on the job down at the same time as driving wages up. The labour hierarchy that sets white collar against blue, permanent against casual, was attacked by workers insisting on the maximum for everyone. The battle in the factory was linked to working-class life outside through direct appropriation of basic social needs.
Tanaka-San Will Not Do Calisthenics (75 min.) 2008 Australia
By Maree Delofski
This striking film shows the struggle of Japanese Oki Electric Manufacturing worker and singer Tetsuro Tanaka. Tanaka refused to accept the militarization of his job through calisthenics and the mind control of the company. As result, he is harassed and fired by the company. Rather than giving up, he decides to sing every day in front of the factory. He has continued this battle for 28 years, and in the process, has exposed the nature of this corporate management system. Tanaka has been to LaborFest before, and his music continues to ring out. His words “Never import the corporate fascism of Japan!” continue to have meaning.
http://www.tanakafilm.com
http://www.din.or.jp/~okidentt/eigohome.htm
http://unionsong.com/u218.html
7:30 Show
Citizen McCaw (78 min.) 2008 US
By Sam Tyler
The film chronicles events from July 2006, when editor Jerry Roberts and five of his colleagues quit the Santa Barbara News-Press, citing owner and co-publisher Wendy McCaw’s abandonment of journalistic ethics, which McCaw denied. Since then, McCaw and dozens of her former staffers have been engaged in a fierce clash of wills that raises important national questions of journalistic ethics and media ownership. McCaw’s attorneys assert that she alone can decide how news is covered. The other side, represented by journalists and community leaders, says that journalism is a public trust, asserting that the publisher must keep out of the news operation. Citizen McCaw shows the struggle for reporters and newspaper workers rights in an atmosphere of terror as a new newspaper owner seeks to clamp down the stories that must be told. This received national publicity when the owner McCaw fired and slandered the newspaper workers.
www.citizenmccaw.com

July 13 (Monday) 5:30, 7:30 PM $5.00 Roxie Theatre - 3117 16th St., at Valencia, SF
5:30 Show
The Women of Brukman (88 min.) (2008) Argentina
By Ishak Isitan
This is an inspirational story of female workers who take over a Buenos Aires men’s clothing factory during Argentina’s financial collapse. The owners of the Brukman Clothing Company, facing bills, deficits and wages they can’t possibly pay, ship all of the management out without mentioning a word to the garment workers. Spurred on by devotion to their craft, families and each other, the workers of Brukman decide to keep the factory running themselves. Soon the former owners and the government come knocking, leading the workers to stage a grueling peaceful protest for the simple right to earn a decent living. Director Ishak Isitan takes us through all the stages of the workers’ struggle, with footage right in the middle of the action.
www.kochlorberfilms.com
7:30 Show
Workers’ Republic (60-min.) 2009
By Andrew Freund
Three weeks before Christmas 2008, in the depths of the economic crisis, Chicago company, Republic Windows and Doors, told their workforce that the factory was closing. Three days later, when the Republic employees came in to pick up their final checks, they were informed that they would not be paid for their final week or receive their accrued vacation pay. Their insurance benefits were cut immediately, and they were denied the 60-day severance guaranteed under the federal WARN Act.
What those workers did next reverberated around the world, reminding the working class it possesses a power long forgotten. They occupied the doomed factory 24-hours a day for nearly a week, declaring they would not leave until they were given what their employer owed them.
The Murals and Art of Bernard Zakheim (27 m) 2009
By Margot Smith
Bernard Zakheim (1896 - 1985) was born in Poland and came to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1918. He was well known for his many murals and frescos financed in part by the Works Progress Administration under Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s 1930s New Deal. Nathan and Masha Zakheim, Bernard’s son and daughter, tell of their father’s work in Poland, the story of the Coit Tower murals, of his Holocaust paintings and his later work celebrating life.
Murals shown here include The Library at Coit Tower, The Jewish Wedding at the San Francisco Community Center, and The History of Medicine in California at Toland Hall, University of California, San Francisco.
offcentervideo@aol.com
www.offcentervideo.com

July 14 (Tuesday) 5:30, 7:30 PM $5.00 Roxie Theatre - 3117 16th St., at Valencia, SF
5:30 Show
The World According To Monsanto
(109 min.) 2008 French
By Marie-Monique Robin
(Please note: This program has been changed from the printed schedule)
Marie-Monique Robin has produced a powerful and frightening film in understanding the danger on a global level of out of control genetic engineering and the food industry. Workers, farmers, consumers and the environmentalists are all threatened by the unregulated development and growth products from this industry. The US media have censored the role of Monsanto and other biotech companies in spreading genetically engineered products that are harmful to workers in the laboratory, farmers and consumers around the world.Injured biotech worker David Bell who worked at Agraquest in Davis, which was owned by a former Monsanto Pest Division molecular biologist Pam Marrone, is one of the victims of this unbridled development and cover-up by the biotech industry.
http://wideeyecinema.com/?p=105
www.MonsantoFilm.com
7:30 Show
H-2 Worker (68 min.) 1990 US
by Stephanie Black
Stephanie Black has a record of making films about the real costs of economic development including Life and Debt about the economic destruction in Jamaica because of IMF policies. In H-2 worker, we learn about the real labor conditions of agricultural workers who are brought to the US and then used virtually as slave labor in the H-2 program. These workers who are brought in to Florida’s Lake Okeechobee area from Jamaica and the Caribbean are the “slave” workers of America providing great profits for the agricultural owners and misery for the workers and their families. It also is connected with the efforts in California by some leading politicians to bring back the “guest workers” program.
http://www.lifeanddebt.org/h2worker/

July 15 (Wednesday) 5:30, 7:30 PM $5.00 Roxie Theatre - 3117 16th St., at Valencia, SF
5:30 Show
Justice In The Coal Fields (56 min.) USA 1995
by Anne Lewis
This year marks the 20th anniversary of the 1989 United Miner Workers strike against the Pittston Coal Company. This film by labor videographer Anne Lewis documents this militant strike and occupation of the company’s factory. Over 4,000 miners and their families were arrested in this struggle against union busting and the massive use of scabs to break the union and destroy the medical benefits of 1,500 pensioners, widows and disabled miners. Hundreds of state police were involved in escorting the scabs in this effort. The union also faced a $64 million dollar fine from State and Federal judges that was used to weaken the union nationally and was supported by Clinton’s NLRB Chair Bill Gould.
7:30 Show
Seeds of Peace (50 minutes) 2008
By André Kloer Holland
Seeds of Peace: workers’ rights in a legal no-mans’ land tells the story of Palestinians who work in the Israeli settlements on the West Bank. One of these settlements is Nizzane Ha Shalom (Seeds of Peace). Because of the questionable juridical status of the Israeli settlements on the West Bank, it is unclear which laws apply to Palestinians who work there. There is also a weak enforcements of the few laws that do exist.
The consequence of this juridical no-man’s land is that Palestinians work in the settlements without minimum wage and legal protection. Despite of this, more and more Palestinians are turning for work to these settlements, because the Palestinian economy is unable to create enough jobs. Jawdat Talousy was one of these workers and defended his rights for all he was worth. He tried to unite the workers in order to demand better labour conditions and was fired by the boss.
www.march21.nl

July 16 (Thursday) 5:30, 7:30 PM $5.00 Roxie Theatre - 3117 16th St., at Valencia, San Francisco
5:30
On Strike: The Winnipeg General Strike, 1919 (19 min.) Canada 1991
By Joe Macdonald and Clair Johnstone Gilsig
This film provides the background about why the workers in Winnipeg were forced out and strike and the individuals on both sides of the struggle. The attack on the strikers on June 21, 1919 led to death and the defeat of the workers despite their bravery and just cause.
Harry Bridges, A Man And His Union (58 min.) 1992 US
By Bari Minnot
Harry Bridges was a critical and central figure in the San Francisco General Strike and this documentary provides a vivid view of his life and response not only to the issues in the strike but also to the massive effort to deport Harry Bridges starting in 1939 for accused of being a member of the Communist Party. This film using footage of the strike and his role is indispensable in showing the wit, humor and character of the founder of the ILWU.
http://www.mw-prod.com/Film/film_harry.html
7:30 Show
Labor’s Turning Point (59 min) (1981) US
By John DeGraaf
The 1934 Minneapolis truck drivers’ strike was a pivotal struggle for working people of the mid-west. As a result of new tactics developed in the successful strike, it led to the organization of over the road truckers and the growth of the Teamsters nationally into one of the most important and powerful unions in the United States. The film shows how the strike was organized and how the union broke the back of the anti-union Citizen’s Alliance and made Minneapolis a union town. It also includes the ground breaking role of the strikers’ wives in organizing for the strike and the establishment of a daily strike bulletin. These tactics are still relevant today in the struggle of labor to organize and survive.
http://www.onedayinjuly.org/
Witness To Revolution, The Story of Anna Louise Strong
By Lucy Ostrander (27 minutes) 1984 US
This film contains the history of the 1916 General Strike in the context of the life of Anna Louise Strong, a partisan and a journalist, who reported on the strike and also on the Everett, Washington Massacre, which also took place in the same year. The film provides a close up look at why the strike took place and how it affected the working people of Seattle and the world. www.stourwater.com

July 17 (Thursday) 7:00 PM (Donation) ILWU Local 6 Hall - 255 9th St., SF
Films of The San Francisco State Strike and Panel Discussion
Screening of On Strike (26 min.)(1969) shot and edited by Saul Rouda, David Dobkins and others in the Newsreel Collective, and The Turning Point (SF State Strike) (58 minutes), about the San Francico State strike of 1968-1969. The San Francisco State strike, which lasted 6 months, was backed by the San Francisco Labor Council, ILWU and other unions. It was filmed by students at the school. We will screen the films and talk about the work of these film makers. Saul Rouda, a member of CWA NABET Local 51 and an associate of IATSE Local 16, will present his film and others will discuss the strike and the films.

July 24 (Friday) 7:00 PM (Donation) Niebyl Proctor Library - 6501 Telegraph Ave., Oakland
Porto Marghera-The Last Firebrands (2004) 52 min.
by Manuela Pellarin
40th Anniversary of Italy’s “Hot Autumn.”
A film about petrochemical workers who took matters into their own hands in the giant industrial zone engulfing Venice. Porto Marghera documents autonomous workers and their experiences from the point of view of the worker-activists themselves.
“The mass refusal of literally toxic work forced hours on the job down at the same time as driving wages up. The labour hierarchy that sets white collar against blue, permanent against casual, was attacked by workers insisting on the maximum for everyone. The battle in the factory was linked to working-class life outside through direct appropriation of basic social needs (electricity, housing, food).
Unlike most more or less academic accounts of Italian Operaismo, which tend to focus on high-profile groups and individual leaders, Porto Marghera documents autonomous worker organization from the point of view of the worker-activists themselves, who talk about their experiences in the film. Many aspects and problems of this phase of class struggle are of immediate relevance today”.
To be followed by a discussion of the strike wave in Italy, sparked by the strike at FIAT’s Mirafiori plant in Turin, that set into motion the “Hot Autumn” and which resulted in nearly a decade of heightened class struggle throughout Italy.

July 26 (Sunday) 2:00 PM (Tickets $10; seniors/students $8) The Delancy Street Screening Room - 600 Embarcadero, SF
A War In Hollywood
A Film Screening
by Oriol Porta (89 min.) 2008
A War In Hollywood is an in-depth look at the impact that the Spanish Civil War and Franco’s dictatorship had on the North American film industry. Hollywood used the Civil War as a subject in more than 50 films. The defeat of democracy in Spain left an “open wound” in the heart of liberal actors, directors and screenwriters in the US, who used affection towards democratic Spain as a symbolic feature to define the romantic spirit of their characters. This sympathy, however, was shaped according to the American political tendencies of each period. This evolution is narrated through the personal story of Alvah Bessie, a Hollywood screenwriter who fought as a member of the International Brigade. This meticulous documentary includes excerpts from Casablanca, For Whom the Bell Tolls and The Way We Were among others, and commentary by actress Susan Sarandon.
Sponsored by The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA) & LaborFest
For Information Contact 510-548-6521