The inside story of Polmaise Colliery and the miners who were the first to walk out and the last to go back to work during the miners' strike.
Social & External
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.
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.
Documentary about the nurses' strike in Finland on autumn 2007.
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.
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.
Covers the 12-week-long strike at Kinleith Pulp and Paper Mill, owned by New Zealand Forest Products in January 1980.
A film about the first benefit rock concert when major musicians performed to raise relief funds for the poor of Bangladesh. The Concert for Bangladesh was a pair of benefit concerts organised by former Beatles guitarist George Harrison and Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar. The shows were held at 2:30 and 8:00 pm on Sunday, 1 August 1971, at Madison Square Garden in New York City, to raise international awareness of, and fund relief for refugees from East Pakistan, following the Bangladesh Liberation War-related genocide.
Gold fever has gripped northern Niger. In search of the precious metal, and despite the risks, an army of researchers has invaded the sites of interest. While camps are set up and dismantled as rumours of new leads spread, Moussa and his companions are banking on the Ikazan vein.
In 1992 – 500 years after the beginning of Spain's global empire with the discovery of America – Spain proudly presented itself to the international community as a modern, developed, dynamic country through the Olympic Games in Barcelona and the Expo in Seville. But for filmmaker Luis López Carrasco (1981, Murcia), 1992 was also the year in which the regional parliament building in Cartagena was razed during furious protests against the threatened closure of various local industries. El año del descubrimiento revives this almost forgotten history in a typical Spanish bar in Cartagena, where different generations come together to drink, eat, smoke and talk. Stories from witnesses, demonstrators and strikers from back then and discussions among younger café visitors on themes such as class consciousness, the economic crisis and the role of unions percolate to the surface amidst talk of other life issues.
Up against one of the most powerful companies on the planet, a group of Amazon workers embark on an unprecedented campaign to unionize their warehouse in Staten Island, New York.
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.
On the 5th of March 1985, a crowd gathered in a South Yorkshire pit village to watch a sight none of them had seen in a year. The villagers, many of them in tears, cheered and clapped as the men of Grimethorpe Colliery marched back to work accompanied by the village’s world-famous brass band. The miners and their families had endured months of hardship. It had all been for nothing. The miners had lost the strike called on March 6th 1984. They would lose a lot more in the years to come. But was it a good thing for the country that the miners lost their last battle?
The mining industry, which always had been “sponsor” and “financier” of the soccer clubs in the Ruhr valley during the post-war period, doesn’t exist anymore nowadays in that form. Many of the once glorious clubs which dominated German soccer until the 1970s faded into obscurity without financial backers. The documentary “Im Westen ging die Sonne auf" ("The sun had risen in the west“) shows the history of the “Revierfußball” from after the second World War until the decline of the mining industry and recalls legendary players and forgotten clubs. The film shows especially how deeply rooted the sport was back then in the entire lifestyle of the Ruhr area - in private life as well as in society - and how structural change also left clearly visible marks in sports. With pictures from back then, interviews with contemporary witnesses, and footage of original locations nowadays, a contemporary document of German post-war history, by taking the example of soccer, has been created.
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?
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