LABOR STUDIES

B E S T S E L L E R S
THE FIGHT
IN THE FIELDS
THE CHARCOAL PEOPLE SHIPBREAKERS

1877: THE GRAND ARMY OF STARVATION

This video looks at a nationwide rebellion that brought the U.S. to a standstill, when 80,000 railroad workers went out on strike to protest the excesses of the railroad companies.


...ALL OUR LIVES

Examines the lives of several women who actively participated in the social revolution during the Spanish Civil War, women who are as dynamic in their 80s as they were in their youth.


AÑO NUEVO

This expose of the plight of undocumented Mexican workers in the U.S. also provides a comprehensive overview of the complex issue of Mexican immigration, including interviews with prominent scholars, attorneys and organizers.


THE BATTLE OF LOCAL 5668

How a small labor dispute at the Ravenswood Aluminum Plant in Ravenswood, West Virginia erupted into a national boycott and media campaign that changed the way unions deal with management.


BAYMEN

This video portrays the work of men who continue to earn a living by harvesting shellfish from Long Island Bay, near New York City, and selling them to local markets.


THE BIG H

This video is a film-noir spoof, private eye Clio Malarkey investigates the central role played by working Americans in U.S. history and the hazards of misinterpreting the past.


BITTER CANE

Examines the history of Haiti, from the 1804 revolution to the occupation (1915-34) by U.S. Marines, and the repressive Duvalier regimes of `Papa Doc' and `Baby Doc.'


BRASS VALLEY

This video offers an in-depth historical examination of Connecticut's Naugatuck Valley brass industry, from its heyday to its present decline.


THE BRICK-MAKERS

Portrays the day-to-day existence of a peasant family which produces earthen bricks for a living, revealing different aspects of the culture of poverty.


BULLSHIT

Her opponents gave her the "Bullshit Award" for sustaining global poverty. Time magazine hailed her as one of the great heroes of our time. She is Vandana Shiva and this is a film about globalization, genetic engineering, bio-piracy, food and water.


BURLEY: GROWING TOBACCO IN AMERICA

Examines the plight of a Kentucky tobacco farmer and his family in the face of uncertain government price support programs and a growing national antismoking campaign.


CALCUTTA CALLING

Business Process Outsourcing is the fastest growing industry in the world. In India, over 350,000 people are currently working in call centers. Vikeeh Uppal, or "Ethan Reed," is one of them. You may have already spoken with him.


CARNIVAL TRAIN

This documentary examines the unique American subculture of the carnival by chronicling an entire season of the James E. Strates Shows, one of the oldest carnivals in America, and the last to tour cities and towns throughout the U.S. by train.


THE CHARCOAL PEOPLE

This film by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Nigel Noble documents the workaday lives of Brazilian peasants who cut down trees in the Amazon rain forest and burn the wood in earthen kilns to make charcoal, an essential ingredient for the manufacture of pig iron in the U.S.


COCALERO

In 2006, Evo Morales became the first indigenous president of Bolivia - winning the election with the largest majority in the country's history. Hailed as "outstanding" by the New York Times, Cocalero is a captivating portrait of this controversial figure and his astonishing rise to power.


COURAGE OF THE PEOPLE

A dramatic reenactment of the historic 1967 massacre of 'The Night of San Juan,' when the Bolivian army launched a surprise nighttime attack upon striking tin miners and their families.


DAUGHTERS OF FREE MEN

This video tells the story of Lucy Hall and other young Yankee farm women who enter a new world of factory labor and boarding house life in the textile mills of 1830s Lowell, Massachusetts.


THE DEVIL'S DREAM

Portrays the appalling socio-political realities of contemporary Guatemala, where the majority of the population--malnourished and illiterate--are exploited by wealthy landowners and businessmen and brutally repressed by the military.


DOG DAYS

This video examines the world of New York City's hot-dog vendors, revealing their lifestyles, hopes and dreams, and the current political struggle in which New York's Mayor Rudy Giuliani is attempting to restrict their access to the city's streets.


DOING AS THEY CAN

features a fugitive woman slave describing life, work, and day-to-day resistance to slavery on a North Carolina cotton plantation during the 1840s and 1850s.


DOMESTIC DIFFERENCES

Examines the relationship between Francis Mcnam, a black domestic worker in Cape Town, and her white employers, the Silberman family, graphically illustrating the vast difference in the quality of life for blacks and whites in South Africa.


THE DOUBLE DAY

A look at working women in Latin America and their efforts to achieve equality in the home and workplace. Most combine their participation in the labor market with their family functions as mothers and wives, thus working a 'double day.'


DREAMS ENSNARED: DOMINICAN MIGRATION TO NEW YORK

This documentary examines the situation of Dominican immigration into New York City, detailing the economic pressures of unemployment and poverty in the Dominican Republic which have led to a rapidly growing Dominican community in New York.


DR. TOER'S AMAZING MAGIC LANTERN SHOW

This video features a company of players traveling in the 1870s South and presents the meanings of freedom and ways African Americans realized the promise of emancipation during and after the Civil War.


FACTORY (RUSSIA IN TRANSITION, VOL. 1)

A meticulous study of a steel and clay factory in the Urals, Sergei Loznitsa's Factory is an artfully composed meditation on man and machine..


THE FIGHT IN THE FIELDS: CESAR CHAVEZ AND THE FARMWORKERS' STRUGGLE

This historical documentary tells the story of Cesar Chavez, the charismatic founder of the United Farmworkers Union, and the movement that he inspired-one that touched the hearts of millions of Americans with the grape and lettuce boycotts, a nonviolent movement that confronted conservative politicians like Ronald Reagan and the powerful Teamsters Union.


FIVE POINTS

this video looks at New York in the 1850s as seen through the views of a native-born Protestant reformer and an immigrant Irish-Catholic family.


FREE VOICE OF LABOR: THE JEWISH ANARCHISTS

A dramatic portrait of immigrant life in the U.S. as seen through the eyes of the sweatshop workers who made up the Jewish anarchist movement.


GANDY DANCERS

Features the musical traditions and verbal recollections of eight retired African-American railroad track laborers, whose occupational folk songs were once heard along the railroad lines that crisscross the South.


GRASS WAR!: PEASANT STRUGGLE IN BRAZIL

In 1959, some 800 families resisted efforts to remove them from their remote farms. One peasant leader, Jofre Correa Netto, became known as the “Fidel Castro of Brazil,” and became the target of an assassination attempt.


GUATEMALA: ROADS OF SILENCE

Examines the plight of Guatemalan Indian peasants victimized by the government's counterinsurgency program which has led many Guatemalans to go into exile or to become internal refugees inside the country.


HARD EARTH

Against the current political backdrop of attacks on white-owned farms in Zimbabwe, this documentary investigates what life is like on one of these occupied farm estates. It features interviews with commercial farmers, farm workers, land occupiers, and independence war veterans, all of whom relates stories of a divided society.


HEAVEN WILL PROTECT THE WORKING GIRL

This video tells the story of the 1909 shirtwaist strike is told through vignettes that explore immigrant women's lives in turn-of-the-century New York.


THE INHERITANCE

Selected by Time Magazine as one of the ten top films of 2004, Per Fly’s The Inheritance is a powerful and timely drama about a man torn between family and business.


I SPENT MY LIFE IN THE MINES

This film autobiography of a Bolivian miner also chronicles the rise and fall of the mining industry and the political history of Bolivia.


IN CANE FOR LIFE

Shot during the seven months of the Brazilian sugar cane harvest, this video portrays what may be the last generation of the nation’s 800,000 sugar cane cutters (an environmental law approved by the National Congress has ruled that by 2015 practically all cane harvesting must be mechanized).


INNOVATING NICARAGUA

Shows how the Innovators Movement of the Sandinista Workers Union fabricated machine parts and other items to maintain the Nicaraguan economy during the U.S. economic blockade.


IT HAPPENED IN HUALFIN

This three-part documentary on Indian peasant life in the Catamarca region of Argentina is an emotionally moving examination of the generational cycle of poverty in underdeveloped countries.


JOURNEY OF A RED FRIDGE

The journey of a young boy, hired to carry a red Coca-Cola fridge across the Himalayan Mountains, is an acute portrait of child labor in the developing world. This unusually beautiful and moving documentary is supported by the Global Fund for Children.


LADIES OF THE LAND

As small farms continue to disappear at an alarming rate, a growing number of women are venturing into this tradition-bound, male-dominated industry - and revitalizing it from within. Ladies of the Land explores the recent emergence of the woman farmer and her connection to the boom in organic farming.


THE LAND BURNS

The film profiles Juan Amaro, 35 years old, who six years ago settled with his wife and eleven children on an abandoned ranch.


LAND FOR ROSE

Examines the popular movement for land reform in Brazil. The film shows massive demonstrations, marches and protests throughout Brazil, including the establishment of a large camp of some 1500 landless peasants at an unused private farm in Rio Grande do Sul.


MADE ON RAILS: A HISTORY OF THE MEXICAN RAILROAD WORKERS

Examines the history of one of Mexico's most combative unions, from the 1920s through the present day, through archival footage and interviews with surviving participants.


NEIGHBORS: THE UNITED STATES AND MEXICO

An in-depth look at economic relations between the U.S. and Mexico, including banking, trade and illegal immigration, and the impact of maquiladoras--labor-intensive factories owned by U.S. firms but located in Mexico--and how these 'offshore' operations affect American consumers and workers.


PRODUCING MIRACLES EVERYDAY

Over half of the Latin American labor force works in the `informal economy,' creating their own forms of income and employment through hard work and ingenuity.


PROFESSION: CHILD

This shocking documentary, produced by the International Labour Organization, reveals the exploitation of child labor in Brazil today, focusing on the daily lives of four children in and around Rio de Janeiro.


PROFIT MOTIVE AND THE WHISPERING WIND

An epic, visual meditation on the progressive history of the United States, from colonial times to the present, as seen through its cemeteries, historical plaques, and markers. 2008 National Society of Film Critics Award winner.


LA RAZA UNIDA

This video documents the first national convention in El Paso, Texas in September 1972 of the La Raza Unida Party, a third political party whose membership consisted primarily of Mexican-American citizens.


REBELLION IN PATAGONIA

This classic of the Latin American cinema is based on actual historical events involving the brutal military suppression of a series of strikes during the early Twenties by rural workers in the southernmost province of Argentina.


THE RETURN OF JOE HILL

Tells the story of Joe Hill (1879-1915), a Swedish immigrant to America who became a songwriter, cartoonist and labor organizer for the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and whose 1915 execution by the state of Utah for a crime he probably did not commit transformed him into a martyr for the labor movement and an international folk hero.


ROOSEVELT, NEW JERSEY: VISIONS OF UTOPIA

During the Great Depression, 120 families of Jewish garment workers from New York City moved to the New Jersey countryside to develop a government-sponsored, agro- industrial cooperative community.


SACRED EARTH

Reveals the plight of landless peasants in Guatemala, where property ownership is restricted to a small percentage of the nation's most wealthy citizens.


SAVAGE ACTS: WARS, FAIRS, AND EMPIRE

This video examines American overseas expansion at the turn of the century and tells the story of how the Philippine War and American domestic culture forged a new U.S. foreign policy.


SEEN BUT NOT HEARD

This video follows the lives of four Mexican women and their families whose undocumented husbands and partners, as workers at the World Trade Center, lost their lives in the tragic events of 9/11.


SHIPBREAKERS

Welcome to Alang , India , the site of a gargantuan scrap yard where oceangoing ships come to die. Forty thousand Indians live and work here, dismembering and scavenging the hulks of 400 vessels every year.


SHOP TALK

Focusing on a family-owned printing plant in New York City recently sold to a conglomerate, and set against a background of economic insecurity and the impoverishment of the quality of work through the growth of automation, this film offers an in-depth examination of the present state of American working class consciousness.


SHOUT YOUNGSTOWN

Examines the closing of three major steel plants in Youngstown, Ohio, between 1976 and 1980, showing the social and human costs of this tragedy through interviews with steelworkers, their families and friends, labor attorneys, local union leaders and community activists.


SLAVE REPARATIONS

This documentary examines the current controversy over the issue of slave reparations, addressing the most often voiced objections ("It’s long over," "I had nothing to do with it," "Affirmative Action is enough," etc.) to the claim for financial restitution to the ancestors of slaves for the wealth created by black labor in previous centuries.


THE SOCIALIST, THE ARCHITECT, AND THE TWISTED TOWER

The intriguing (and twisted) story behind the design and construction of the "Turning Torso," Europe's tallest residential building, designed by world famous architect Santiago Calatrava.


STITCHING OUR FUTURE

This poignant and inspiring documentary tells the story of Coopa-Roca, a cooperative of seamstresses in a shantytown in Rio de Janeiro who, in an effort to provide an income for their families, design and manufacture women’s clothing and accessories.


STRAWBERRY FIELDS

Planted in Israel, harvested in Gaza, and exported to gourmet markets in Europe, the Gazan strawberry is the only product sold abroad as Palestinian produce. The amazing story of this little red fruit - and the people who cultivate it - is a study in globalization, politics and occupation.


STRONG ROOTS

This video documents the struggles of peasants in the Landless Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil, which is engaged in a national political campaign to occupy and cultivate unused land.


TEA PARTY ETIQUETTE

This video is based on the life of Boston shoemaker George Robert Twelves and reveals how working people helped make the American Revolution.


THEY WERE NOT SILENT: THE JEWISH LABOR MOVEMENT AND THE HOLOCAUST

Tells the story of the anti-Nazi and rescue activities of the American Jewish labor movement, including their aid to the Underground fighters of the ghettoes of East Europe, and their assistance to Holocaust survivors in refugee camps across the globe.


TROUBLE ON FASHION AVENUE

Examines the economic problems of the New York City garment industry, including sweatshop working conditions, the plight of the working poor, the state of trade unionism, the impact of imports, and the role of organized crime in the apparel industry.


TWENTY YEARS LATER

In the early Sixties, the Brazilian peasant leader, Joao Pedro Teixeira, was assasinated by two gunmen hired by local landowners.


UP SOUTH

This video tells the vivid tale of the African-American exodus from the rural South to northern industrial cities during World War One.


WE DIG COAL

Examines the situation of women coal miners in the U.S., their struggle to be hired, their day-to-day lives in the mines, the economic necessity that first made them seek work as miners, and the opposition they face from their families, the community and their male coworkers.


WHO BUILT AMERICA? (Series)

This ten-part series on nineteenth and twentieth-century American history uses period graphics and innovative computer animation to make history accessible and exciting for high school, college and adult education students.


VALLEY OF TEARS

An epic examination of race, class and corruption in America, Valley of Tears is a vivid account of the 1979 onion strike by Mexican-American migrant farmworkers in Raymondville, Texas and its profound impact on the present day.


VOICES FROM THE FIELDS

This documentary follows farmworkers from California's Salinas Valley back to their roots in the fields of rural Mexico, where they recount their everyday struggle to cope in the midst of the globalization of agriculture and the impact of NAFTA.


VOICES FROM THE FRONT LINES

This video profiles the Los Angeles-based Labor/Community Strategy Center and its grassroots political activism, which includes multiracial community organizing and coalition building, around such issues as environmental racism, corporate injustice, and equitable public transportation.


WE PUT HER THERE: THE CONTRIBUTORS

This documentary tells the exciting story of who was involved: hundreds of thousands of ordinary citizens from all walks of life, even children, gave their small earnings to realize Miss Liberty, first in France and then in the U.S. It took 14 years to consummate.


WITHOUT FEAR OF BEING HAPPY

Profiles the Workers Party (PT) in Brazil, the largest left-wing political party in the world today, and the most important political opposition to emerge in Brazil since the formal return to democratic rule in 1985.


WORKINGMAN'S DEATH

Is manual labor disappearing in the 21st century or is it just becoming invisible? Michael Glawogger's stunningly photographed Workingman's Death showcases five of the most dangerous and grueling professions in the world, offering a ground-level lesson on globalization, humanity, and the environment.