Working class cinema - a video guide
Libcom.org's guide to class struggle films, showing realistic portrayals of the working class and revolutionary situations.
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American
Shari Springer Berman
On Blue Collar - Kino Fist
Film theory on Paul Schrader's car noir, Blue Collar.
In this world...a man himself is nothing. And there ain't no world but this one.
You're wrong there, Top. I seen another world.
- Terrence Malick's The Thin Red Line
Postmodern anti-hero: capitalism and heroism in Taxi Driver - Matthew Iannucci
Film theory examining the themes of masculinity, media reportage and cinema worship in the landmark film of the 1970s.
Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver is a gritty, disturbing, nightmarish modern film classic that examines alienation in urban society. From a postmodernist's perspective, it combines the elements of noir, the Western, horror, and urban melodrama as it explores the psychological madness within an obsessed, inarticulate, lonely antihero cab driver, Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro).
Storming the West - Celluloid Liberation Front
Film theory on the spaghetti western films of the 1960s and 70s and how they were informed by the revolutionary conditions in the real world.
"I remember we used to wear the same dusters from The Wild Bunch or the one James Coburn wore in Duck, You Sucker!" —Francesco Piccioni (Red Brigades member)
Ill Manors, directed by Ben Drew, and The Angels' Share, directed by Ken Loach
Submitted by Tom Jennings on Oct 24 2012 20:28
Official 'truth' being more dishonest as well as stranger than fiction, Tom Jennings looks instead at feral youth fairytales screened since last August's riots.
We Found Hope in a Loveless Place. Film review – Tom Jennings
Heat, work and genre - J.A. Lindstrom
Film theory about the role of work, both illegal and legitimate, in Michael Mann's noir Heat.
The publicity campaign regarding the film HEAT (Michael Mann, 1996) focused on Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino's appearing together in the film (playing robber and cop, respectively) and on Michael Mann as an auteur of slickness and style with a talent for capturing the moments ethos and fashion.[1] But reviewers were curiously uncertain as to what the film was about.
UK screen representations of youth in austerity
Submitted by Tom Jennings on May 3 2012 16:48
Two decades-worth of British poverty porn reveals more than might be thought.
The Poverty of Imagination. Film and television review – Tom Jennings
China Blue
Submitted by bulmer on Mar 10 2012 08:06
China Blue is a documentary that follows a 17 year old Chinese girl migrating from her home in the Sichuan province to work in a jeans factory in Guangdong. It shows the harsh realities as a factory worker for millions of migrants in China.
The film gives a very detailed insight, what it is like to work in a Chinese factory. The extremely long workday, going for weeks or months without a day to rest, not getting paid (even when you do it's barely enough for the amount of work done), sleeping in cramped conditions, eating crap food and being threatened every step of the way by a complete bell-end of a boss.
On Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti
Submitted by wojtek on Feb 23 2012 02:29
Reading literature can be a drag at times so here is some visual content and music to compliment the modest archive at libcom.org on Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti.
Just in case you don't know who Sacco and Vanzetti were, they were two anarchist Italian immigrants residing in the U.S. who, amid a climate of Red-baiting and jingoism, stood accused of a robbery and murder based on rumour, circumstantial and contradictory evidence. The pair were imprisoned, subjected to unfair trials and eventually executed on 23 August, 1927.
Wuthering Heights, directed by Andrea Arnold
Submitted by Tom Jennings on Feb 2 2012 20:13
Never mind the prissy costume drama bollocks. This raw punk historicism is a landmark, in several senses, of British cinema.
Othering Depths. Film review – Tom Jennings
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