2024 Rochester Labor Film Series
September 6 - November 1
All films shown at the Eastman House Dryden Theater, 900 East Avenue
Friday, September 6, 7:30 p.m.
RUSTIN
(George C. Wolfe, US 2023, 106 min., DCP)
This is the story of Bayard Rustin’s critical yet unsung role in organizing the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Rustin brought together civil rights leaders, unions—including leaders Walter Reuther and Cleveland Robinson—and motivated and organized the assistance of dozens of young “angelic troublemakers.” While forced into the background by dominant civil rights leaders fearing his communist background and sexuality would jeopardize public support, Rustin’s organizing skills formed one of the largest acts of non-violent protest in American history and led to the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Produced by Barack and Michelle Obama’s Higher Ground Productions, this film earned lead actor Colman Domingo nominations for the Academy Award and the British Academy Film Awards.
Friday, September 13, 7:30 p.m. Rochester Premiere
TWO DAYS, ONE NIGHT
(Deux jours, une nuit, Jean-Pierre Dardenne, Luc Dardenne, Belgium/France/Italy 2014, 95 min., DCP, French, Arabic, and English with English subtitles)
The manager of a solar panel factory in Belgium conducts a secret ballot vote among a unit of sixteen workers by which they decide to either renew or eliminate the job of their co-worker, Sandra. Each worker gets a substantial bonus if they vote to dismiss her, but lose it if they choose to re-hire her. The company bets on selfishness while Sandra has the weekend to argue her case to each of her co-workers. Can group solidarity triumph over rational self-interest embedded in capitalism?
Friday, September 20, 7:30 p.m. Rochester Premiere
LOVE AND WORK
(Pete Ohs, US 2024, 74 min., DCP)
In a desolate Texas town, manufacturing work is unnecessary and illegal, and those caught a third time will be in “big trouble.” For Diane and Fox, and other members of a small underground group, life without the production of things in a well-disciplined workplace is unthinkable. So, they furtively try to satisfy their uncontrollable need to work, ready to make anything. Given the latest advances in artificial intelligence, robotics and other labor-saving strategies, Love and Work prepares us to consider how we will want to live in management’s dream world of “lights-out manufacturing.”
Friday, September 27, 7:30 p.m.
BETWEEN TWO WORLDS
(Ouistreham, Emmanuel Carrère, French 2021, 106 min., DCP, French, English, and German with English subtitles)
Based partly on French journalist Florence Aubenas’ best-selling 2011 non-fiction book, The Night Cleaner, a writer, Marianne, goes undercover as a ferryboat cabin cleaner to personalize and expose the brutality and indignities of the global financial crisis on the unemployed and low-wage workers whose survival relies on finding temporary hours in the absence of steady work. But, unlike Aubenas, Marianne hides her real identity from her co-workers. Is she aware of the risks of her deception?
Friday, October 4, 7:30 p.m.
DO NOT EXPECT TOO MUCH FROM THE END OF THE WORLD
(Nu astepta prea mult de la sfârsitul lumii, Radu Jude, Romania/Luxembourg/France/Croatia/Switzerland/UK 2023, 163 min., DCP, Romanian, English, German, Hungarian, and Italian, with English subtitles)
Directed by Golden Bear winner Radu Jude, this is a fierce and darkly comic swipe at modern day Romanian life. Overworked and underpaid production assistant Angela is assigned to film a workplace safety video for a multinational corporation in Bucharest, and on the side, vise-signals through her TicTok
alter ego, Bobită. When one of the interviewees makes a statement that refutes the company’s blame-the-worker campaign, Angela has to reinvent the story. This anarchic satire is a wild and unforgettable ride through the vulgar indignities of the “new economy.”
Friday, October 11, 7:30 p.m.
UNREST
(Unrueh, Cyril Schäublin, Switzerland 2022, 93 min., DCP, German, Russian, French, and English with English subtitles)
Unrest, the balance wheel of a mechanical timepiece as well as political action, is the apt title for this film’s connection of anarchism and watchmaking in late 19th-century Switzerland. It dramatizes young Pyotr Kropotkin’s 1872 visit to Saint-Imier, the center of Swiss watchmaking and site of the anti-authoritarian congress of anarchists—a visit he credits to his full turn to anarchism. While the small factory owners apply crude time and motion tests at the assumed Longines watch company, the recent rise of the telegraph, trains and photography enable the workers to connect with and support anarchists around the world. Shäublin’s own grandmother and great aunts set unrest wheels in this region.
Friday, October 18, 7:30 p.m.
Rochester Premiere
UNION
(Stephen Maing, Brett Story, US 2024, 100 min., DCP)
Amazon Labor Union President Christian Smalls and core organizers granted the filmmakers access to their years-long David-and-Goliath battle against Amazon’s JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island. Rare in filmmaking, the result is a close-up view not only of a unionization drive, but a historic one made by young workers without support from established unions. We are the fly on many walls: their encampment across the street from the company, their in-person and Zoom meetings and even Smalls’ apartment. We witness them learn as they go, locking horns over many tactics but in unison of their strategy to organize “from the inside out” by relying on their first-hand knowledge of the company, the work and the workers.
Friday, October 25, 7:30 p.m.
THE WHISTLE AT EATON FALLS
(Robert Siodma, US 1951, 96 min., DCP)
Lloyd Bridges stars as Brad Adams, union president of Doubleday Plastics, who is told by the owner that half of the workforce must be replaced by machines or the factory closes. When the owner dies suddenly, his widow (Dorothy Gish) convinces Brad to become the company president. Now as owner, Brad must save the factory without betraying the union. A story of profits, progress and community that remains remarkably contemporary. It includes Ernest Borgnine in his first feature role (as Bill Street).
Friday, November 1, 7:30 p.m.
THE OLD OAK
(Ken Loach, UK 2023, 113 min., DCP)
After such a long and successful career, Loach, who is 87 years old, has announced that The Old Oak will be his final film. It tackles the issue of asylum and anti-immigrant prejudice in a once-thriving mining village in Northern England. The last-standing pub, the Old Oak, and its owner, TJ, offer a setting for collective coping with the tough times. But, when a group of Syrian refugees moves into the village, rifts fueled by bigotry develop both within the community and between the community and its newest inhabitants. The unexpected friendship between TJ and a young Syrian woman, Yara, plus an enduring working-class ethos open up new possibilities for the divided village in this deeply moving drama.
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