Clean

Work is becoming more service oriented and more and more services rely upon us doing harm to each other. In most people's lives, work operates as a degrading and debilitating force. It disables people's critical and perception capacities. Unless workers assume responsibility for evaluating the meaning and implications of the work they do, there will never be the capacity to redirect the modern work institutions from their courses of violence and exploitation. Built in seven parts which correspond to each day of the week, this film studies the relationship between work being done and the nature of the people that are doing it.

The gestures, the words, the rites of a day like any other in the offices of a large insurance company.

Short documentary on the shunters in the Darling Island, Sydney, Australia railyard. Filmed in 1977.

"Fim do Sem Fim" is a feature-length documentary that has as its backdrop the imminent disappearance of certain trades and professions in Brazil. Shot in 10 Brazilian states, the film is a dive into the inventiveness and resistance of men in the face of technological and cultural changes.

Common sense says you can't make a living in America playing avant-garde improvisational jazz. But Ken Vandermark does it anyway. Among musicians, Vandermark's work ethic is almost mythic. The Chicago reed player has released over 100 albums with nearly 40 ensembles, spends over eight months per year on the road, and lives every other waking moment composing, arranging, performing—and trying to discipline his two hyperactive canines. Though Vandermark was the recipient of a 1999 MacArthur genius grant, he still spends most of his life in smoky clubs and low-budget recording studios, hoping people will plunk down hard-earned cash to hear his wholly non-commercial music. Following the artful cinéma vérité style of the internationally acclaimed Sheriff (Work Series #1), Musician (Work Series #2) forgoes all interviews and voice-overs. It is a fly-on-the-wall time capsule that expertly captures every subtle sound and texture of this most American of art forms.

Agricultural scientist and mother Isolde struggles with the dicrepancies between her personal convictions and the political realities in East Germany.

36 year old welder Karin works at an agricultural factory in Mecklenburg, Germany.

Böttchers film showcases three young workers who learn how to paint, draw, and make sculptures out of stone. The film generated a storm of mistrust, as there is no leading communist party, and the three individuals live blithely and independently of the official dictates. It became one of the first DEFA documentary productions that were not allowed to be shown.

You've never heard of Jonathan Hoefler or Tobias Frere-Jones but you've seen their work. They run the most successful and respected type design studio in the world, making fonts used by the Wall Street Journal to the President of the United States.

Departing from peripheral details of some paintings of the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum, a female narrator unravels several stories related to the economic, social and psychological conditions of past and current artists.

After getting caught in a fight, Vahid needs to sell one of his kidneys to avoid a prison sentence of many years. While waiting for the liberating call from a buyer, a wish for a better life starts to grow within him.

There is a popular theory that it takes at least 10,000 hours of focused practice for a human to become expert in any field. In Japan, there are craftspeople who go far beyond this to reach a special kind of mastery. These people are called Takumi and they devote 60,000 hours to their craft. That's 8 hours a day, 240 days a year, for over 30 years. It's an almost superhuman level of dedication to a life of repetition and no shortcuts. This film asks the question: Will human craft disappear as artificial intelligence reaches beyond our limits?

It is a fetish, a mantra, a secret religion to modern man: work. In times of the financial crisis and massive job reductions, this documentary movie questions work as our 'hallow' sense in life in a way that both humors and pains us.

This documentary follows a group of women on a typical workday as they prepare meals for a dockyard in Rostock. The viewer never learns their names - there are no interviews. The women are presented simply as workers: cooking, cleaning, hauling, and serving dishes amid clanking pots and hot steam.

Handbook of Movie Theaters’ History is a documentary about the history, the development in the present days and the future of movie theaters in the city of Turin, Italy. It mixes the documentary language with comedy and fiction, and is enriched by interviews to some of the most important voices of Turin cinematography. The film follows the evolution of movie theaters by enlightening its main milestones: the pre-cinema experiences in the late 19th Century, the colossals and the movie cathedrals of the silent era, the arthouse theaters, the National Museum of Cinema, the Torino Film Festival, the movie theaters system today and the main hypothesis about its future.

Violeta and Vyollca Dukay live in the south of Kosovo, close to the border with Albania. Faced with a very high unemployment in their country since the end of the war, they became deminers. They’ve been going to the minefields every day for six years now. The unique and very strong relationship that exists between the two sisters helps them to overcome their fear and to keep hoping in spite of the precariousness of their situation and the risks they run each day to earn their living.

Our premise is that work has become an act of self-sabotage. Empty corporate jargon, ever-changing management fashions and self-serving bureaucracy masquerading as efficiency hijacked the purpose of work. Creative documentary The Happy Worker will show how we got to this point and the very human behavior that led us here. We want to show how this unhealthy system is maintained and what keeps us from calling bullshit.

In 2007, unable to compete with cheaper offshore production, Hooker Furniture Co. closed its plant in Martinsville, Virginia, after 83 years in operation. With These Hands follows the last load of wood down the assembly line as it is cut, honed, and assembled into fine furniture. Along the way, employees at the factory share their perspectives on work, community, and survival in a country devastated by de-industrialization and outsourcing.

The documentary looks at the various meanings of leisure in the contemporary world and presents its implications in the field of ethics, diversity, coexistence and citizenship, among other aspects that need critical analysis and proactive action.

Isaac, a failed actor and Skies employee, shows us the daily life of workers in an average call center, facing the boredom to get to the end of the work day.