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FilmWorks United (2014)
(Scheduled time is approximate)July 5 (Saturday) 7:00 PM (Donation) ILWU Local 34 Hall- 801 2nd St. next to AT&T Ball Park
FilmWorks United International Working Class Film & Video Festival
Miners Shot Down (85 min) 2014 by Rehad Desai (South Africa)
Miners Shot Down is a powerful new film that tells the story of the organized massacre of 34 unarmed miners by the government of South Africa and the owners of the Lonmin platinum mine, the largest platinum mine in the world.
The film follows the strike during August 2012. From day one, as the miners struggle for justice and human rights, they faced not only a hostile management, but also a government now includes Cyril Ramaphosa, one of the owners of the mine. Currently, he serves as the deputy of the African National Congress (ANC), which runs the government. The film also reveals the National Union of Miners (NUM) to be a company union whose union officials make high Salaries, and therefore, argue against the mining company paying a living wage. This film shows the union members trying to negotiate with the company at the same time that the company works with the ANC government to physically destroy the strike movement with armed police attacks and company thugs.
This led to the formation of the Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU), which was winning thousands of workers from the NUM.
Desai’s film shows that by mid-morning of August 16, 2012, the AMCU president Joseph Mathunjwa saw that hundreds of heavily armed police were arriving and preparing to attack the miners. He urged the miners to return to their homes so they would not be assaulted, but it was too late.
Rehad Desai, the film director, was already in the area prior to the massacre and was able to clearly film the murderous conspiracy between the mine owners and the government to break the strike. This has become a turning point for the working class of South Africa. It raises the question of how a government that they put in power to remove apartheid could end up as a government representing the very bosses and owners that they thought they had defeated?
These events have led to National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) the largest union of South Africa splitting from the ANC and calling for the launch of a working class party. This history in Miners Shot Down documents a crucial turning point for the working people of South Africa.
The president of the National Union of Metal Workers of South Africa (NUMSA), Andrew Chirwa, was going to attend this event, however, due to the national strike of 230,000 metak workers started on July 1, he will not be able to attend.July 10 (Thursday) 7:00 PM (Donation) 518 Valencia
FilmWorks United International Working Class Film & Video Festival
Black & White And Dead All Over
Director - Chris Foster (84 min.) 2013
The collapse of the newspaper industry in the United States has not only led to the destruction of tens of thousands of professional journalist jobs but has threatened the public’s right to know what is going on in their community, country and world. This documentary provides a concrete overview of how the newspaper industry’s liquidation has affected the journalist and the fight to keep papers alive.
Included are interviews with Bob Woodward of the Washington Post and David Carr of the New York Times and journalists from the Philadelphia Inquirer who depict an industry so desperate that the production of news is driven toward what can be sold on the market for the profits of the owners.
Pulitzer winning journalists are told that their stories and work is no longer good enough for the paper and instead they need to produce stories that make money for the publisher. This drive for profits as the film shows is a dire threat to the public and their right to know what is happening in our lives.
Following the film there will be a panel which will also look at how technology has affected the newspaper industry with George Kelley, Bay Area Media Group CWA Newspaper Guild Delegate, Bill Snyder, CWA 39521 Pacific Media Guild Freelance Unit Chair and tech writer.
http://blackandwhiteanddeadallover.netJuly 10 (Thursday) 7:00 PM (Free) Berkeley City College auditorium - 2050 Center St. Berkeley
FilmWorks United International Working Class Film & Video Festival
On Vient Pour La Visite” (Coming For A Visit)
By Lucie Tourette (53 min.) French with English Subtitles
Sponsored by the Global Studies Program
In October 2008, an unprecedented strike of 6,000 workers took place in the restaurants, cleaning companies, and construction sights of Paris. This strike was unprecedented as these workers were sans papiers - workers without legal papers. The workers, coming mostly from North Africa, work the most dangerous and difficult jobs under constant threat of deportation. From 2008 to 2010 they came together to fight for legal status under the slogan “we live here, we work here, we’re staying here!”.
The documentary film, by Lucie Tourette, follows the story of these workers who, with the help of activists from the CGT trade union, organize to collectively confront their bosses. Their goal? To force the bosses to sign one-year contracts which allow them to obtain legal status. Through the strike, they learn that the key to their struggle is their own confidence and collective power.July 11 (Friday) 7:00 PM (Donation) First Unitarian Universalist Church - 1187 Franklin Street, SF
FilmWorks United International Working Class Film & Video Festival
ASOTRECOL, The Struggle Against Transnationals in Colombia
Producer - , (55 min.) 2013, Colombia
With tactics ranging from hunger strikes with lips stitched shut to a nearly 1,000-day sit-in at the U.S. Embassy, Colombian workers are putting the world’s attention on General Motors’ treatment of its workers. This film tells the incredible story of an association of injured workers who have taken on one of the most powerful corporations in the world, and have won victories they never thought were possible. The Obama administration pushed the US Colombian trade agreement with the argument that it would protect the workers of Colombia from assassinations and repression because of labor protections. Since the agreement was passed by the Congress and signed by President Obama the repression continues and US corporations like GM and Coca-Cola continue to injure and terrorize Colombian workers.
Injured workers from Asotrecol have also come to the United States to the headquarters of General Motors to demand justice and have not received justice. The UAW which owned shares in General Motors have also been silent about the treatment of the Colombian GM workers and the struggle continues.
Discussion will follow the film.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xbj7Vl8Sbv8July 17 (Thursday) 7:00 PM (Donation) 518 Valencia - near 16th St. SF
FilmWorks United International Working Class Film & Video Festival
The Plundering
By Oliver Ressler (40 min.) 2013 Austria
Extreme levels of privatization can only be carried out under conditions where people are under severe pressure, as in the transformation of former Soviet republics towards independence and capitalism. Since the Rose Revolution in 2003, the former Soviet republic Georgia under went such a radical transformation. President Mikheil Saakashvili implemented one of the most extreme neoliberal projects in the world. Today, Georgia is 9th among 185 states on the World Bank list of “Ease of Doing Business” countries. This is creating an unstable situation in a radical, free-market economy with the liquidation of most social safety nets. Most Georgian residents are being driven into un-experienced levels of poverty.
The film The Plundering focuses on four cases of aggressive, state-property privatization policies in Tbilisi. Through interviews, it discusses the privatization of the water system in Tbilisi and of Tbilisi’s popular market, the Dezerter Bazaar. A newly emerging movement prevented the attempted sell-off of the National Scientific Library, and the destruction and conversion of the historical Gudiashvili Square in Tbilisi’s city center into a shopping mall.
http://www.ressler.at/the_plundering/
Made In The USA, Tom Hudak’s Plan to Cut Your Wages
By Bill Gillespie, Director, Writer (19 min ) 2013 Canada
This film is the first film to expose the real role and ideology of “open shop” states that prevent unionization. Canadians capitalists are now pushing to model Canadian labor laws on open shop anti-labor U.S. states like Georgia. Canadian Ontario Public Service Employees Union decided they wanted to tell the real story about these states in the US and made a documentary. http://www.madeinusamovie.ca
Judith Portrait of a Street Vendor By Zahidi Pirana (22 min) 2013
Thousands of immigrant workers in major cities in the United States make their living as street vendors. This is the story of Judith and her life in the streets of New York as she struggles to survive the obstacles she and other immigrant workers make in order to survive as an immigrant workers, activists and community organizers.
http://www.streetvendormovie.com/?q=node/3High Power (27 min) by Pradeep Indulkar, India
This powerful film is about the lives of workers and the community at the Tarapur nuclear power plant, which was built fifty years ago in a poor rural community. Like other nuclear power plants around the world, people in the community were displaced and provided no real compensation but they were promised good jobs.
This, like the other promises according to the people of Tarapur, turned out to be a lie. They also become the victims of diseases directly caused by radiation and other toxins brought into their community by the plant
Their community, their lives and their work turn into a nightmare they are struggling against as are communities where nuclear plants have been built.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msxq0UifZlEJuly 18 (Friday) 7:00 PM (Donation) First Unitarian Universalist Church - 1187 Franklin Street, SF
FilmWorks United International Working Class Film & Video Festival
Empire of Shame Director - Hong Li-gyeong (92 min) 2013, Korea
Empire of Shame is about the struggle of Samsung workers to defend their health and safety and get compensation from the company. The corporation refused to admit that workers were getting cancer from the chemicals and toxins that were used in the plants.
A total of 193 employees have applied for workers compensation for industrial diseases and 73 of these workers have already lost their lives to disease.
Workers are required to give direct proof of a casual link between their duties and their sickness. This makes it extremely difficult for worker who are very sick to get the treatment they need.
This film shows the struggle to get to the truth and to defend the health and safety of the workers.
http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_entertainment/624867.htmlJuly 21 (Monday) 7:00 PM (Donation) 518 Valencia - near 16th St.
FilmWorks United International Working Class Film & Video Festival
Nuclear Power, Repression And Education Workers Under Attack
Forum and the Film Decontamination
The Japanese Abe government is pushing ahead with restarting Japan’s 50 nuclear plants and telling the people that they can “overcome” radiation and that Fukushima has been “decontaminated”.
The nuclear utilities are using their power and money to indoctrinate the students that nuclear power is not a real issue and the Japanese people have to accept these nuclear plants.
Japanese education trade unionists Minoru Nihonyanagi, president of Education Workers Caucus of National Coordinating Center of Labor Unions (NCCLU) and teacher Eriko Kojima will report on the growing attacks on education and how teachers are fighting back.
Teachers are speaking out against the censorship and against the government eliminating the Japanese clause 9, which prohibits imperialist war.
The US government and politicians here in the United States have actively sought to force Japan to dump its anti-war constitution and spend more on militarization and expansionism. They will talk about the fight against nuclear power, the growing repression of anti-nuclear activists and what the labor movement is doing to fight for the defense of public education and against nuclear power.
A film “Decontamination” will also be shown about these issues.
Speakers:
Minoru Nihonyanagi, Miura Peninsula Union (Japanese Teachers Union) and President of Educa- tion Workers Caucus of NCCLU
Toshikazu Masuda, General Secretary of Nara City Union (JTU) and member of Education Workers Caucus of NCCLU
Tadashi Seto, a member of Doro-Chiba International Labor Solidarity Committee
Chizu Hamada, No Nukes Action Committee
July 24 (Thursday) 7:00 PM (Donation) ILWU Local 34 Hall - 801 2nd St. near AT&T ball park
FilmWorks United International Working Class Film & Video Festival
155 Sold(65 min) 2012, Greece, Greek in English sub
By George Panteleakis Greece was selected to be the first European economic experiment with a massive austerity program to privatize and destroy social services. This destruction of jobs and public services led to a massive protest in May 2011 and this full contact documentary shows the struggle shot by the film maker and activists in the struggle. Thick clouds of smoke covered the angry protests around Syntagma Square (Constitution Square) on 28-29 June 2011, while a majority of 155 deputies of the Greek Parliament bowed down to the austerity agenda. The working class, retirees and students engaged in mass protests and faced violence against them by the police. Following this film there will be a discussion about the role of the EU and the United States in imposing IMF-WB polices of privatization and deregulation in Europe.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpTOlwGI6loAll Points North
Producer: BlueArts Film, Mizgin Müjde Arslan, D: Therese Koppe, Athens/ London (2013), (25 min)
The dream of heading North is the driving motivation for Laurent and Ibrahim, two young men leaving their country of Senegal in search of a better life. As undocumented migrants, they find themselves trapped in Greece, bound to the Greek borders by the lack of immigration papers. Before leaving their homeland their impressions of Europe were very different from the harsh realities they faced once arriving. For migrants such as Laurent and Ibrahim, there is no stability in a better, safer land; their journeys to find such are continually ongoing.
Karl Fischbacker and Dr. Irmi Voglmayr of Labournet Austria will discuss the struggles in Greece and the role of working people.
https://www.facebook.com/allpointsnorthdocumentaryJuly 25 (Friday) 7:00 PM (Donation) 518 Valencia - near 16th St., SF
FilmWorks United International Working Class Film & Video Festival
Jai Bhim Comrade: Blast From The Caste
Director - Anand Patwardhan (180 min) 2012
The recent election in India of a rightwing reactionary government and the collapse of the Congress Party again exposes the basic contradictions within India. The lowest caste, the Dalit or “untouchables,” for thousands of years, was denied education and treated as bonded labour. By 1923 Bhimrao Ambedkar broke the taboo, won doctorates abroad and fought for the emancipation of his people. He helped draft India’s Constitution and led his followers to discard Hinduism for Buddhism. His legend still spreads through poetry and song.
In 1997, a Dalit protest erupted in a Mumbai slum after a statue of B.R. Ambedkar was desecrated. Ambedkar (1891-1956) was a reformist who agitated to end the caste system, helped Gandhi write the Indian constitution and amassed a large following among the Dalit. At the protest, 10 unarmed people were killed when police opened fire. Singer, poet and activist Vilas Ghogre later committed suicide to protest the killings.
Shot over 14 years, this three hour film is jam-packed with information. The film covers the biographies of both Ghogre and Ambedkar as well as Indian politics and the day-to-day lives of the Dalit who are still struggling for freedom and justice in India.
http://www.tehelka.com/a-song-that-will-be-sung/July 27 (Sunday) 6:00 PM (Donation)Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts - 2868 Mission St., SF
FilmWorks United International Working Class Film & Video Festival
The Conditions of the Working Class In England
(82 min.) 2012 British
Directed by Mike Wayne and Deirdre O’Neill
Frederick Engles wrote about the working class in 1844, The Condition of The Working Class in England, and his classic book still resonates today. This film is inspired by this Engels’ book and asks how much has life for working people really changed since then?
Working people not only in the UK but also throughout the world are being pauperized with temporary part time jobs at companies like WalMart and McDonalds, and young workers cannot even afford to leave home and start families. Many young people as well cannot afford to go to college in the new slave labor economy, and if they do, they become debtors to the banks for the rest of their lives with loans of tens of thousands of dollars. In 2012, actors, community activists, workers and filmmakers from Manchester and Salford in the United Kingdom decided that they would update this work to the 21st century. Through interviews, performances and the production of a play, the film shows the daily struggle of working people and connects their struggles today with the very same struggles Engels was writing about in his life. It shows the creativity, determination and camaraderie of working people, and at the same time, challenges the corporate media stereotype of working people.
This film explores their struggles to create a theatrical show from scratch based on their own experiences and links it to Engels’ book. They have eight weeks before their first performance. The Condition of the Working Class follows them from the first rehearsal to the first night performance and situates their struggle to get the show on stage in the context of the daily struggles of ordinary people facing economic crisis and austerity politics. The people who came together to do the show turned from a group of strangers, many of whom had never acted before into The Ragged Collective, in little more than two months.
This film, full of political passion and anger, is a wonderful testament to the creativity, determination and camaraderie of working people that blows the media stereotypes of the working class out of the water.
http://www.conditionoftheworkingclass.info/about-2
Memory of Past Struggles Unions and labor militancy in the 70s
(107min.) Argentina. Made by Violeta Bruck, Gabi Jaime and Javier Gabino
The film shows how workers from 1969 were organizing independently of the Peronist labor movement including in the powerful 1975 General Strike. It also shows the role of not only the bosses but also the government, which helped usher in mass repression eventually leading to a military dictatorship in 1976.
With footage from the period and reminisces of the past struggles, it shows the strengths and weaknesses of the labor movement. Thousands of workers and labor activists were kidnapped and murdered as part of this US supported military coup in 1976.
This year, Argentina has again been rocked by mass general strikes against the economic assault on working people, and this documentary provides an Up-close view of the militant trade unionists who are part of the working class history of Argentina. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5mbc36n1DQJuly 29 (Tuesday) 7:00 PM (Donation) 518 Valencia - near 16th St., SF
FilmWorks United International Working Class Film & Video Festival
The Southeast of Ankara -Trailer (Ankaran?n guneydogusu)
Direcotor - Yonetmen, (22 min.) 2013 Turkey
The families of those immigrated for various reasons live in the four edge districts of Ankara which are located in the boundaries of Çankaya. The families who have lived for years in this region are exposed to an enforced immigration for urban transformation. The movie, expresses the urban transformation and immigration subjects through the viewpoint of the children of those families.
Istanbul Rising (18 min.) 2013 By Vice
The effort to protect the privatization of Gezi Park in Istanbul touched off one of the biggest protests and demonstrations in Turkey. This film shows how the people tried to protect the park from developers and property speculators who the AKP Prime Minister Erdogan represents.
Bread, Concrete and Roses (Ekmek beton ve güller)
Direcotor - Yonetmen, (42 min. ) 2013 Turkey
The film is about the dangerous life of construction workers in a foreign land far from their homeland, and their social problems.
July 30 (Wednesday) 7:00 PM (Donation) ILWU Local 34 Hdall - next to AT&T ball park
FilmWorks United International Working Class Film & Video Festival
The Forgotten Space (112 mins) 2010
By Allan Sekula and Noël Burch
The Forgotten Space investigates global maritime trade. It highlights displaced farmers and villagers in Holland to underpaid truck drivers in Los Angeles to Filipino maids in China. Sekula and Burch offer a sobering portrait of workers’ conditions, the inhuman scale of sea trade and the secret lives of port cities. http://www.theforgottenspace.net/static/home.htmlBlack Deal By Lee Hoon-kyu (87 min) Korea (US Premier)
After a major national debate in Korea over the struggle against the privatization of the national rail system film director LEE Hoon-kyu used crowd funding to produce a film on the role of privatization globally. Lee looks at how privatization has been implemented in Germany, England, France, Chile, Argentina and Japan and what it has meant for working people and the public.
Korean today is facing major battles not only over privatization of the railway system KORAIL but also the affects of deregulation pushed by the US government, which is creating one catastrophe after another including the recent Ferry disaster where hundreds of children, passengers and crew died.
With the growing privatization wave in the United States including education, public services and even the military this issue is of international importance and must be approached from a global perspective.
http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20140623001202
The producer of Descent To Fly (originaly scheduled at this time slot) has been unable to provide the video at this time to LaborFest.