A Working Class Film Festival
Harlan County USA
Barbara Kopple’s documentary account of the 1974 strike of Kentucky mine workers is arguably one of the finest documentaries ever made in the U.S. and possibly the best on the problems of organized labor. film website | trailer | wikipedia
Salt of the Earth
1954 drama based on a strike at Empire Zinc in New Mexico uses actual miners and their families as actors. watch film | wikipedia
With Babies and Banners
This story of the Women's Emergency Brigade is a 1979 documentary film directed by Lorraine Gray. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. This film was one of the first to put together archival footage with contemporary interviews of participants and helped spur a series of films on left and labor history in the US utilizing this technique. The film was also important in helping bring into view the history of American women being active in the public sphere, particularly in union and labor actions. The film was, further, ground breaking because it was produced and directed by women watch film | wikipedia
Struggles In Steel
In this 1996 documentary, over 70 retired black steelworkers tell heart-rending tales of struggles with the company, the union and white co-workers to break out of the black job ghetto. They retrace a century of black industrial history - the use of blacks as strikebreakers against the all-white union during the 1892 Homestead Strike, the Great Migration of fieldworkers to the North in World War I, the racial divisions between workers during the Great Steel Strike of 1919 and the ultimate success of the CIO organizing drives of the 1930s. | link to film
The Wobblies
This 1979 documentary provides an overview of the rise and fall of the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World), complete with archival footage, loads of interviews, Wobbly art and songs. | view film
In Search of History: The True Story of the Molly McGuires
Narrated by David Ackroyd. The Molly Maguires was an Irish 19th-century secret society active in Ireland, Liverpool and parts of the eastern United States, best known for their activism among Irish-American and Irish immigrant coal miners in Pennsylvania. After a series of often violent conflicts, twenty suspected members of the Molly Maguires were convicted of murder and other crimes and were executed by hanging in 1877 and 1878. This history remains part of local Pennsylvania lore. | view film
Jerry Martin: Deacons for Defense
At the height of the Civil Rights Movement, some churchmen formed groups they called the Deacons for Defense. Their mission was to protect the ministers and the leaders of the movement who were under constant threat from the Ku Klux Klan. Many of the ministers did not want this, but the Deacons for Defense did it anyway. This is the story of Jerry Martin, The Deacons for Defense, registering voters, the march from Selma to Montgomery and the story of his daughter, the first African-American student in a previously all white school. | view film
San Francisco State Strike 1968, Black Students & Third World Liberation Front
Footage of the strike at SF State 1968, protesting for the establishment of ethnic studies departments. Shows massive confrontations of police and students, faculty. | view film
