The Future of '36

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

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

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.

Carré rouge sur fond noir

In August 2012, mineworkers in one of South Africa’s biggest platinum mines began a wildcat strike for better wages. Six days later the police used live ammunition to brutally suppress the strike, killing 34 and injuring many more. Using the point of view of the Marikana miners, Miners Shot Down follows the strike from day one, showing the courageous but isolated fight waged by a group of low-paid workers against the combined forces of the mining company Lonmin, the ANC government and their allies in the National Union of Mineworkers.

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.

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.

‘VIGO 1972’ narrates the events which took place in Vigo in September 1972, when the firing of five Citröen auto workers resulted in the largest general strike in the history of Galicia — with over thirty thousand workers — all of this during the Franco dictatorship in Spain.

When workers at the Hormel meatpacking plant in Austin, Minnesota are asked to take a substantial pay cut in a highly profitable year, the local labor union decides to go on strike and fight for a wage they believe is fair. But as the work stoppage drags on and the strikers face losing everything, friends become enemies, families are divided and the very future of this typical mid American town is threatened.

In 1977, the workers of the INAVE vehicle assembly company went on strike. This strike was declared legal, one of the few registered in the country. This strike was also a strike that demanded great sacrifice from the workers. It lasted more than three months, more than three months without pay and in constant struggle, until the strikers finally achieved their victory.

Les 16 de Basse-Pointe

De Charles de Gaulle à Emmanuel Macron, les gardiens de l'empire

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

Unpublished images and exclusive testimonies from the main figures in power who tell how they faced the coup threat of January 8, 2023, a recent trauma in the country's history and revealing something that still remains hidden.

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.

Ecos de huelga

Documentary about a miner's strike in Borinage.

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.

In October 1925, due to a depression in the textile industry a 10 percent wage cut was imposed by mill owners. The strike that followed went for thirteen months and was vigorously and violently opposed by mill owners and police authorities. This was not an uncommon consequence of striking, and strikers were often fired upon throughout the early Twentieth Century by both police forces and the National Guard as was demonstrated in the modern section of D.W. Griffith's INTOLERANCE (1916) and many other films of the time. THE PASSAIC TEXTILE STRIKE was made by the strikers' Relief Committee to not only show what was happening on the picket lines but to also provide much needed funds for the relief of strikers and their families.

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.