"They Didn't Starve Us Out": Industrial Cape Breton in the 1920s

The Delano Manongs: Forgotten Heroes Of The United Farm Workers Movement

May 2014 •English

The Delano Manongs tells the story of farm labor organizer Larry Itliong and a group of Filipino farm workers who instigated one of the American farm labor movement’s finest hours – The Delano Grape Strike of 1965 that brought about the creation of the United Farm Workers Union (UFW). While the movement is known for Cesar Chavez’s leadership and considered a Chicano movement, Filipinos played a pivotal role. Filipino labor organizer, Larry Itliong, a cigar-chomping union veteran, organized a group of 1500 Filipinos to strike against the grape growers of Delano, California, beginning a collaboration between Filipinos, Chicanos and other ethnic workers that would go on for years.

Contract

January 2008 •Finnish

Documentary about the nurses' strike in Finland on autumn 2007.

Solidarność: How Solidarity Changed Europe

October 2019 •German

Gdańsk, Poland, September 1980. Lech Wałęsa and other Lenin shipyard workers found Solidarność (Solidarity), the first independent trade union behind the Iron Curtain. The long and hard battle to bring down communist dictatorship has begun.

Wildcat: The Struggle for Democracy in the New Zealand Timberworkers' Union

January 1981 •English

Delegates and workers discuss the issues that effect the Timberworkers’ Union, the reasons for the formation of the Combined Council of Timber Workers Delegates (CCD) and their industrial action.

Kinleith '80

January 1983 •English

Covers the 12-week-long strike at Kinleith Pulp and Paper Mill, owned by New Zealand Forest Products in January 1980.

Rebellion in Patagonia

June 1974 •Spanish

In 1920, workers from Patagonia, in Southern Argentina, gather around an anarcho-syndicalist society and go on strike, demanding better working conditions. When the situation turns unsustainable, President Yrigoyen sends Lieutenant Colonel Zavala to impose order.

The Year of the Discovery

November 2020 •Spanish

In 1992 – 500 years after the beginning of Spain's global empire with the discovery of America – Spain proudly presented itself to the international community as a modern, developed, dynamic country through the Olympic Games in Barcelona and the Expo in Seville. But for filmmaker Luis López Carrasco (1981, Murcia), 1992 was also the year in which the regional parliament building in Cartagena was razed during furious protests against the threatened closure of various local industries. El año del descubrimiento revives this almost forgotten history in a typical Spanish bar in Cartagena, where different generations come together to drink, eat, smoke and talk. Stories from witnesses, demonstrators and strikers from back then and discussions among younger café visitors on themes such as class consciousness, the economic crisis and the role of unions percolate to the surface amidst talk of other life issues.

In Memory of the Land and People

January 1977 •English

“…It is a film that tells in hurried film sequences and a resonant musical score juxtaposing the sublime, funereal despair of Bartok agains tthe gut-bare tones of folk music. Gates has through his filming technique and meticulously selected mining sites, captured all the outrage and sorrow and indignity to the land and its people that strip mining represents. The film is one that all Americans should see, for it shows extremely well the price we have to pay for strip mined coal.” - Dale A. Burk, The Montana “Missoulian”

Stand!

November 2019 •English

In post-World War I Winnipeg, a Ukrainian immigrant and a Jewish woman get caught up in a labour strike.

Union

October 2024 •English

Up against one of the most powerful companies on the planet, a group of Amazon workers embark on an unprecedented campaign to unionize their warehouse in Staten Island, New York.

Harlan County U.S.A.

January 1977 •English

This film documents the coal miners' strike against the Brookside Mine of the Eastover Mining Company in Harlan County, Kentucky in June, 1973. Eastovers refusal to sign a contract (when the miners joined with the United Mine Workers of America) led to the strike, which lasted more than a year and included violent battles between gun-toting company thugs/scabs and the picketing miners and their supportive women-folk. Director Barbara Kopple puts the strike into perspective by giving us some background on the historical plight of the miners and some history of the UMWA. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with New York Women in Film & Television in 2004.

Salt of the Earth

March 1954 •English

At New Mexico's Empire Zinc mine, Mexican-American workers protest the unsafe work conditions and unequal wages compared to their Anglo counterparts. Ramon Quintero helps organize the strike, but he is shown to be a hypocrite by treating his pregnant wife, Esperanza, with a similar unfairness. When an injunction stops the men from protesting, however, the gender roles are reversed, and women find themselves on the picket lines while the men stay at home.

Matewan

August 1987 •English

Filmed in the coal country of West Virginia, "Matewan" celebrates labor organizing in the context of a 1920s work stoppage. Union organizer, Joe Kenehan, a scab named "Few Clothes" Johnson and a sympathetic mayor and police chief heroically fight the power represented by a coal company and Matewan's vested interests so that justice and workers' rights need not take a back seat to squalid working conditions, exploitation and the bottom line.

Centralia: Pennsylvania's Lost Town

May 2017 •English

A small town is overcome by a massive underground coal fire in 1962. As a result hundreds of residents had to be relocated.

Thatcher vs The Miners: The Battle for Britain

May 2021 •English

On the 5th of March 1985, a crowd gathered in a South Yorkshire pit village to watch a sight none of them had seen in a year. The villagers, many of them in tears, cheered and clapped as the men of Grimethorpe Colliery marched back to work accompanied by the village’s world-famous brass band. The miners and their families had endured months of hardship. It had all been for nothing. The miners had lost the strike called on March 6th 1984. They would lose a lot more in the years to come. But was it a good thing for the country that the miners lost their last battle?

Made in Dagenham

October 2010 •English

A dramatization of the 1968 strike at the Ford Dagenham car plant, where female workers walked out in protest against sexual discrimination.

Mémoires d'un condamné

November 2017 •French

Un homme de Parole

January 1991 •French

Broken Rainbow

May 1985 •English

Documentary chronicling the government relocation of 10,000 Navajo Indians in Arizona.

Pit Pony

December 1997 •English

Glace Bay, Nova Scotia Canada, 1901. Willie MacLean is a 10-year-old boy with a love for horses and liking to school to cape the difficult times his family has. Willie's stern, but benevolent father is a coal miner in a local mine along with his older brother John. But when Willie's father is injured and John is killed in an accident at the mine, Willie is forced to step into his brother's shoes to support his older sister Nelle, and two younger sisters until their father recovers. Willie soon finds work at the mine lonely (aka: the pit) and unfriendly in which he forms a bond with a pit pony horse in order to make it though each day.