The Future of '36

In the second largest school district in the United States, 98% of teachers vote to authorize a strike. Watch as one of the largest educator strikes in modern U.S. history unfolds in real-time, highlighting the stories and leadership of some of the women who led it, from union leaders to classroom teachers. From strike vote to contract vote, When We Fight goes behind the picket lines, documenting how and why teachers strike. "This powerful and beautifully crafted film is a must watch for anyone interested in the state of labor in America today." - Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor and Professor of Public Policy, UC Berkeley

Grandpuits & petites victoires

In May 1968, workers, students and young people rise up against the morality and power of the establishment. Faculties and factories are under occupation. Barricades are erected. Paving slabs are launched. Words give way to actions. This is the confrontation. These images bear witness to the men and women who, in their indignancy, march towards their revolution. 50 years ago, as part of our ARC collective, we filmed the uprising of May and June 1968. Out of this material and scenes borrowed from our other filmmaker friends, we created this film.

Documentary following dockers of Liverpool sacked in a labour dispute and their supporters’ group, Women of the Waterfront, as they receive support from around the world and seek solidarity at the TUC conference.

Kieslowski’s later film Dworzec (Station, 1980) portrays the atmosphere at Central Station in Warsaw after the rush hour.

Carré rouge sur fond noir

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.

Petites mains

November 2017, North of Paris : H. Reiner-Onet cleaning company workers are fighting an exemplary battle. This 45 days strike, one of the longest in the history of the French railway, led by these men and women, ended in a decisive victory against two giants, Onet and the SNCF. One of the most impoverished sectors among railway workers, they had no previous experience with striking or organized struggle. How did they pull such a victory ? Their dermination to fight was undoubtedly the key to winning, but so are the links they forged with revolutionary activists who brought with them a tradition of fighting for workers against employers.

On 9 July 2021, the 422 workers at the GKN factory in Campi Bisenzio near Florence received their dismissal, by email. They immediately met in front of the factory, scared away the management's bodyguards and have been holding an open-ended meeting at the factory ever since. In June of 2022, they talk about how they are rooted in the territory, why 30,000 people demonstrated with them. They explain why they put their struggle under the slogan "Insorgiamo!" ("Let's rise up!"), the slogan of the italian partisans who liberated Florence in 1944. But they also talk about their collaboration with climate activists and what they would like to produce. But as things stand today, it is not the workers who are responsible for the ecological damage caused by production: "Nobody asked me what I would like to produce when they hired me. They hired me and that was it."

Chronicle of the 9-week strike by the kaolin workers of Plémet. The film emphasizes the particular nature of such a strike in a rural commune and in a sector of the old Breton proletariat: that of subsoil mining, almost entirely liquidated after the closure of the Hennebont forges.

Risking jobs, friends, family and the opposition of church and community, eight unassuming women begin the longest bank strike in American history.

A 1975 documentary short about a strike being conducted by public-housing residents in St. Louis.

A film documenting work shortages during the Depression of the 1930s and the attempts to deal with the unemployed, in particular young men. The film discusses the establishment of relief camps and projects, where men were paid twenty cents per day; the founding of organizations such as the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF), Workers' Unity League, and Relief Camp Workers' Union; general unionization and protest of the unemployed, including the On To Ottawa Trek, Regina Riot, sit-in strike from May to June 1938 at the Vancouver Main Post Office, Vancouver Art Gallery and Hotel Georgia, and the resulting Bloody Sunday of June 19.

A Cwmni Da produced documentary focused on the Friction Dynamics strike back in 2003.

Les 16 de Basse-Pointe

Ecos de huelga

A RECORD OF THE STRIKE AT GRUNWICK IN 1977. The story of the continuing struggle at Grunwick’s by mainly Indian workers, from July 11th, 1977 until the struggle was lost. It shows the Special Patrol Group attack on the November 7th day of action, how the leadership of the struggle was taken out of the hands of the strike committee, how some of the strike leaders were disciplined by their own union for going on hunger strike outside the TUC in protest at the TUC’s inactivity, and how the post office workers were forced by their union to end their blacking of Grunwick mail. It also shows the beginnings of the similar struggle by immigrant workers at Garner’s Steak Houses in London.

'Stand together!', a film on the "mass day of solidarity" on 11 July 1977, was made in 1977 for the Grunwick Strike Committee by the Newsreel Collective, of which Chris Thomas was a member, and members of the Association of Cinematograph, Television and Allied Technicians (ACTT) and the Transport and General Workers' Union.

Kirby, on the outskirts of Liverpool, England, October 1972. A chronicle of the fourteen-month strike by thousands of tenants to protest against the £1 increase in council house rents due to the Housing Finance Act.