ROCHESTER LABOR FILM SERIES

Films for Interesting Times

A joint effort of the Dryden Theatre and the Rochester Labor Council, the Rochester Labor Film Series presents motion pictures celebrating workers around the world. The first film program of this kind in the nation, we show dramas, comedies and current documentaries on important issues relating to work and workers, especially aspects of work often marginalized or absent in dominant commercial media. Our films from around the world are selected to inform, provoke and inspire.

This year's program appropriately focuses on workers' struggles in diverse contexts: frontline healthcare workers battling COVID-19 in a New York City hospital (The First Wave); women garment workers in Bangladesh struggling to form a union (Made in Bangladesh) and war-widows in Kosovo struggling to find work and provide for their children (Hive); unskilled American workers fighting to form the IWW (The Wobblies) and union members struggling to adapt to the demands of new Chinese managers (American Factory); prisoners rebelling against racism and the constraints of convict labor (Attica); a family in Indiana struggling to sustain its pizzeria (Family Business); a day laborer in Serbia fighting to retrieve his son from a corrupt social services bureaucracy (Father); a hotel doorman in Berlin struggling to maintain his dignity in the face of ageism (The Last Laugh). Common to these films is the story of workers' determined and unflinching response to the physical, social and economic challenges they face.

Learn About the 2022 Labor Film Screenings this Fall

See you at the movies!