The Miners' Strike and Me

I have been pretty satisfied with my life before I got on the bus. When I do in June 2011, my whole life turns upside down. I am just a regular passenger at first. Like other people I was sorry, and felt obliged to help and care for other passengers. Then I begin to film these common heroes with my camera. Those who speak about hope, who provide it and get on the bus, Ms. Kim Jin-suk, and other crane laborers who risk their safety while demonstrating for their rights on high. She, while stationed insecurely on high, begins interacting with the world through Twitter and makes friends. Then I realize I really love her. Will we have her back safely?

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

‘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.

Starbucks baristas in Buffalo unite against corporate exploitation, sparking a generational uprising among working-class Millennials and Gen Z as they challenge a powerful billionaire CEO and fight for their rights.

Der lange Abschied von der Kohle

On April 10, 2014, the environmental activist and president of the Junín community, Javier Ramírez, was arrested and sentenced to ten months in prison for the crimes of “rebellion, sabotage and terrorism”. A few days later, the National Mining Company entered the area accompanied by a squad of at least 200 policemen to carry out studies related to the Llurimagua mining project, in the Íntag cloud forest. Javier with I, Íntag collects Javier Ramírez's reflections after his release, his feeling of condemned innocence, the pain of living in a divided, busy and frightened community, with its social fabric destroyed.

Lee Anne Schmitt explores California's landscape and past to document the history of one-time boom towns built and abandoned by the industries that necessitated their creation. Sold as a limitless land expansive with free opportunity, California was actually, from its onset, fissured by the interwoven needs of private and public interests. Schmitt's film covers various locations through time, as the major industries of the early 20th century (mining, lumber, oil) give way to the military, eventually leading to multinational corporations, and the use of small towns as satellites for growing urban metropolises.

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.

In the cobalt mining areas of Katanga in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), babies are being born with horrific birth defects. Scientists and doctors are finding increasing evidence of environmental pollution from industrial mining which, they believe, may be the cause of a range of malformations from cleft palate to some so serious the baby is stillborn. More than 60% of the world’s reserves of cobalt are in the DRC and this mineral is essential for the production of electric car batteries, which may be the key to reducing carbon emissions and to slowing climate change. In The Cost of Cobalt we meet the doctors treating the children affected and the scientists who are measuring the pollution. Cobalt may be part of the global solution to climate change, but is it right that Congo’s next generation pay the price with their health? Many are hoping that the more the world understands their plight, the more pressure will be put on the industry here to clean up its act.

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.

From a historic genocide trial to the overthrow of a president, the sweeping story of mounting resistance played out in Guatemala’s recent history is told through the actions and perspectives of the majority indigenous Mayan population, who now stand poised to reimagine their society.

In Nevada’s remote Thacker Pass, a fight for our future is playing out between local Indigenous tribes and powerful state and corporate entities hellbent on mining the lithium beneath their land. Vancouver-based Lithium Americas is developing a massive lithium mine at Thacker Pass, but for more than two years several local tribes and environmental organizations have tried to block or delay the mine in the courts and through direct action.

This film documents the coal miners' strike against the Brookside Mine of the Eastover Mining Company in Harlan County, Kentucky in June, 1973. Eastover's 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.

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.

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

'The Devil's Miner' tells the story of 14-year-old Basilio who worships the devil for protection while working in a Bolivian silver mine to support his family.

This documentary film traces the struggle of Indian auto workers of the Maruti Suzuki factory in Manesar, near Delhi, in forming a union. Investigating the underbelly of class conflict and exposing a widespread system of injustice, the film focuses on the repression faced by the workers and their criminal prosecution.

Dancing in Dulias was made by members of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (LGSM) and Lesbians Against Pit Closures during and immediate after the 1984/85 minders strike. Like the forthcoming movie, Pride, it documents the interactions between lesbians and gay men and the miners and their families in Dulais in South Wales - only this time it's the real thing. As well as some memorable footage that includes the Blaenant Lodge banner leading the 1985 Lesbian and Gay Pride march and LGSM members struggling with bingo at the local community hall, the film documents the wider political impact of this seemingly unlikely alliance. (cont. http://www.cambridgefilmfestival.org.uk/films/2014/dancing-in-dulais#sthash.HScQCj7E.dpuf)

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.

Vi som solgte landet