Labor goes to the Movies

Sidney Poitier: Nobody You Can Boss Around

When iconic and groundbreaking actor Sidney Poitier died last month, most of the tributes focused on his brilliant acting, for which he received innumerable awards, as well as his advocacy for Civil Rights. But as Kathy Newman pointed out in a column for Working-Class Perspectives, before he became an actor, Poitier worked as a dishwasher, construction worker, and longshoreman. Famously choosy about his roles on-screen, he played a number of working-class characters throughout his career, and was proud of his working-class and immigrant roots.
Kathy, a frequent guest on this podcast, is a professor of English, literary and cultural studies at Carnegie Mellon university, where she teaches and writes about labor, class, film and media. Sidney Poitier: Nobody You Can Boss Around, by Kathy M. Newman.Lilies of the Field; Blackboard Jungle; Edge of the City; A Raisin in the Sun; The Defiant Ones. NOTE: Check out the DC Labor FilmFest’s upcoming Film/Book/Talk, “Confessions of A Union Buster,” Tuesday, February 8, 7pm – 9pm: FREE; RSVP HERE. Short film program and Q&A with legendary union organizer Bob Muehlenkamp, author of the forward for Confessions of a Union Buster: New Activist Edition (2022).
Produced by Chris Garlock
@dclabor @LaborHeritage1 @DCLaborFilmFest @_kathymnewman
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The 1970 Wisconsin TA Strike

In March 1970 the Teaching Assistants Association at the University of Wisconsin went out on strike for twenty-four days. It was the first TA strike in the history of the United States; the union went on to represent Wisconsin TAs for over fifty years. The film that those students made back then has just been re-edited and re-released, so we sat down with legendary organizer Bob Muehlenkamp – who helped organize the TA union -- to talk about the strike, the film and the labor movement today. Bob wound up leading the Teaching Assistants Association and going on to a long career as a union organizer, he was the National Organizing Director at SEIU-1199, the hospital workers union, and then the Teamster’s Organizing Director. NOTE: With Babies and Banners (with filmmaker Lyn Goldfarb and CLUW president – and Labor Goes to the Movies podcast co-host – Elise Bryant) screens online FREE on Thursday, January 27 starting at 7p ET; RSVP here.
Produced by Chris Garlock
@dclabor @LaborHeritage1 @DCLaborFilmFest
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National Film Registry’s 2021 labor films

Five labor-related films were inducted into the National Film Registry last year: The Murder of Fred Hampton (1971), Requiem-29 (1971), The Wobblies (1979), Chicana (1979) and Who Killed Vincent Chin? (1987). Films in the Registry are selected for their cultural, historic or aesthetic importance to preserve the nation’s film heritage, and the Library of Congress, which maintains the Registry, says that the 2021 selections “represent one of the most diverse classes of films” yet, a fair description for a list that includes both 'Return of the Jedi' and ‘The Murder of Fred Hampton’.
We asked Pat Aufderheide and Tom Zaniello to join us for a discussion about the labor selections. Pat is Professor of Communication Studies in the School of Communication at American University in Washington, D.C., where she founded the School's Center for Media & Social Impact. Tom is the author of a bunch of books on film and work, including Working Stiffs, Union Maids, Reds, and Riffraff, The Cinema of Globalization and The Cinema of the Precariat.NOTE: With Babies and Banners (with filmmaker Lyn Goldfarb and CLUW president – and LaborGoes to the Movies podcast co-host – Elise Bryant) screens online FREE on Thursday, January 27, 2022 starting at 7p ET; RSVP here.
Produced by Chris Garlock
@dclabor @LaborHeritage1 @DCLaborFilmFest
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With Babies and Banners, women still rising

Today’s film is a short documentary that should have been made in the nineteen-thirties, about women who played crucial roles in the sit-down strikes at General Motors factories in 1936 and 1937, strikes that changed American history.
Instead, With Babies and Banners was made in the nineteen-seventies, by a group of women who were not filmmakers but who realized that film was the most powerful way to not only recover this erased history but to be an agent of change, just like those strikes forty years earlier.
On today’s show, Elise and Chris talk with Lyn Goldfarb, one of the producers of With Babies and Banners, about how – against incredible odds, the film came to be, and why it still resonates for audiences today.
They’re joined by labor educator John Revitte, who used various films in classes, including With Babies and Banners.
NOTE: With Babies and Banners (with filmmaker Lyn Goldfarb and CLUW president – and LaborGoes to the Movies podcast co-host – Elise Bryant) screens online FREE on Thursday, January 27, 2022 starting at 7p ET; RSVP here.
Music: I Am a Union Woman-Bobbie McGeeProduced by Chris Garlock
@dclabor @LaborHeritage1 @DCLaborFilmFest @LynGoldfarb @RevitteL
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Maid’s blue-collar babies

The recent Netflix series Maid, based on Stephanie Land's memoir, highlights the challenges that poor and working-class mothers face in juggling low-wage jobs, social services, and child care.
On today’s show, Chris and Elise talk with Lane Windham and Kathy Newman about Maid and the issues it raises about women and work.
Kathy's a professor of English, literary and cultural studies at Carnegie Mellon university, where she teaches and writes about labor, class, film and media.
Lane is an experienced organizer, educator, historian, and activist; she directs WILL Empower, an ambitious collaborative project with Rutgers University to promote women's leadership in the labor movement and the struggle for economic justice. She wrote about Maid in Blue-Collar Babies: Why America’s Working Class Needs Affordable Child Care.
Produced by Chris Garlock
@dclabor @LaborHeritage1 @DCLaborFilmFest @WomenLeadLabor @_kathymnewman
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Labor films at AFI’s EU Film Showcase

Now in its 34th year, the AFI European Union Film Showcase continues its tradition of bringing the best in European cinema to Washington, DC-area audiences. This year's selection includes 53 films from all 27 EU Member States, 11 of them are top contenders for this year's Academy Award® for Best International Feature Film and 13 U.S. and North American premieres.
Three of the films are co-presented by the DC Labor FilmFest: THE GOOD BOSS (starring Javier Bardem), BETWEEN TWO WORLDS (starring Juliette Binoche), and LUZZU.
On today’s show, Elise and Chris discuss the Showcase and the featured labor films -- two of which premiere the weekend of December 4-5 -- with AFI Silver Programming Director Todd Hitchcock and Temporary Associate Film Programmer Josh Gardner; all the films have second showings as well.
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James Catano on MIA: Workers, Working, and Workplaces

Films about work shape our attitudes toward labor and laboring, often by inviting us to identify with individual characters. But what happens when film presents a more direct experience of what workers actually do?
In a column for the Working-Class Perspectives blog, James Catano considered three non-fiction films about the fishing industry: Drifters (1929), Pescherecci (1958), and Leviathan (2013).
On today’s show, Chris and Elise talk with Jim about how these films offer a brief overview of methods for portraying work, and they also help us think about a common format of reality television: the fishing program.
James Catano is producer/director of Enduring Legacy: Louisiana’s Croatian Americans and author of Ragged : Masculinity, Steel, and the Rhetoric of the Self-Made Man.
He’s Professor Emeritus of English and Screen Arts at Louisiana State University.
Produced by Chris Garlock
@dclabor @LaborHeritage1 @DCLaborFilmFest
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Complicit & Who Killed Vincent Chen?

Elise and Chris discuss Who Killed Vincent Chen? (1987) and Complicit (2016) with Virginia Rodino and Heather White, who will be participating in a panel discussion on “Understanding AAPI Hate: Building A Movement of Solidarity and Resistance” on Sunday, July 18 at 7pm.
Both films are available now (through July 18) for free online screening.
Virginia Rodino is president of the Maryland chapter of APALA, the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, a constituency group of the AFL-CIO.
Heather White is a documentary filmmaker and research consultant with more than 20 years experience in international advocacy on labor and human rights issues (she founded Verite). she co-directed Complicit with Lynn Zhang. The film, released in 2016, was screened at 40 film festivals and won nine international festival awards.
NOTES:Who Killed Vincent Chen? was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature; director Christine Choi will also be on the July 18 panel.
Here's the link to the brief video interview with Heather’s assistant, “who had to flee Shenzhen while we were making Complicit. Her experience underscores the risks to activists and NGO's trying to help workers in China. They get harassed to the point where they have to discontinue even when they don't want to.”
The new pandemic film Heather refers to is Songbird (2020).
Produced by Chris Garlock
@dclabor @LaborHeritage1 @DCLaborFilmFest @APALAnational
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“Best of the Fest” DC Labor FilmFest Picks

With just one week to go before the 2021 DC Labor FilmFest wraps up, Labor Goes to the Movies co-host Chris Garlock sat down with Tom Zaniello – author of “Working Stiffs, Union Maids, Reds and Riffraff, An Expanded Guide to Films About Labor” – for his “Best of the Fest” picks.
All the 2021 films are still available in the AFI Silver’s DC Labor FilmFest Virtual Screening Room, through Sunday, June 6, including: WORK SONGS * THE LUNCHROOM [PLANTA PERMANENTE] * IDA B. WELLS: A PASSION FOR JUSTICE * MISS MARX * THE CHAMBERMAID [LA CAMARISTA] * THE WHISTLE AT EATON FALLS * NASRIN * THE NEW DEAL FOR ARTISTS.
NOTE: click here for HAYMARKET - THE BOMB, THE ANARCHISTS, THE LABOR STRUGGLE.
Produced by Chris Garlock
@AFISilver @dclabor @LaborHeritage1 @DCLaborFilmFest
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Movie Club Discussion: The New Deal For Artists

Lincoln Cushing and Harvey Smith discuss The New Deal For Artists, now showing in the DC Labor FilmFest. Narrated by Orson Welles, this remastered classic features interviews and commentary by John Houseman, Studs Terkel, Howard Da Silva, Arthur Rothstein, Joseph Losey, Norman Lloyd and more.
Archivist and historian Lincoln Cushing is the author of All Of Us Or None: Social Justice Posters of the San Francisco Bay Area and Agitate! Educate! Organize! - American Labor Posters; Harvey Smith is the author of Berkeley and the New Deal. Find out more on The Living New Deal website.
We have a bonus guest this week, as longtime union organizer Carl Goldman drops by to tell us about the brand-new film We Made Matzah Balls For The Revolution.
All the DC Labor FilmFest films are still available in the AFI Silver’s DC Labor FilmFest Virtual Screening Room.
PLUS: Register now for the 2021 Great Labor Arts Exchange, coming up – online – June 17-20.
Produced by Chris Garlock and Evan Papp.
@AFISilver @dclabor @LaborHeritage1 @DCLaborFilmFest @LincCushing
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