Working class cinema: a video guide

After Hours directed by Martin Scorsese

Libcom.org's guide to working class films and TV shows, showing class struggles, revolutionary situations and everyday lives.

Submitted by flaneur on October 23, 2013

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Arranged alphabetically in order of the nationality of the director (or creator in the case of TV shows with multiple directors).

American

Brad Anderson

  • The Machinist (2004) - Christian Bale stars as a factory worker whose insomnia has left him emaciated, and whose colleagues turn against him when he was involved in a workplace accident causing one worker to lose an arm.

Shari Springer Berman

  • American Splendor - Adaptation of Harvey Pekar's comic series, which he wrote whilst working as a file clerk in a hospital.

Herbert J. Biberman

  • Salt of the Earth (1953) - Film based on the 1951 miners' strike in New Mexico, and starring many of those involved, it shows how miners and their families all take part in the long hard struggle against the mining company. Made in 1953, it was originally banned as part of the 'Red Scare'.

Kathryn Bigelow

  • Strange Days (1995) - An enjoyable if flawed sci-fi action movie, part of which seeks to investigate the nature of voyeurism via memory implants.

Lizzie Borden

  • Born in Flames (1983) - Sci-fi flick about a post-revolutionary social democratic NYC in which gender and race issues have not been solves. In mockumentary style, it follows two women's guerrilla groups, one majority white and one majority POC.

James Bridges

  • The China Syndrome - A nuclear reactor almost goes into meltdown, whilst a team of reporters are on site covering a story.

Steve Buscemi

  • Trees Lounge - A mechanic, sacked for stealing out of the till, drinks his sorrows away over one summer in a Bukowski-esque anti-tale.

John Carpenter

  • Escape from New York and Escape from LA - Bakunin with an eyepatch is forced to save the world.
  • They Live - A special pair of sunglasses reveal billboards and adverts aren't what they seem.

Coen brothers

  • Barton Fink (1991) - Film about a playwright working in Hollywood in 1941 exploring high and low culture, fascism, World War II and working conditions in the creative industries.
  • The Big Lebowski - The Dude is a loafer that would have made Paul Lafargue blush. When a case of mistaken identity ruins his rug, he is dragged into something far bigger.

Laurie Collyer

  • Sherrybaby (2006) - Maggie Gyllenhaal plays a young drug addict who leaves prison to collect her child from family members who have been looking after her.

Ivan Dixon

  • The Spook Who Stood by the Door (1973) - The CIA hires a token black agent, who then uses his skills to help the militant black power movement. With a soundtrack by Herbie Hancock.

Bill Duke

  • Deep Cover - Focusing on the role of the police in the war on drugs, an undercover cop begins to enjoy the rewards.

Ava DuVernay

  • Selma (2014) - Dramatisation of the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965 for voting rights for African-Americans.

Ryan Fleck

  • Half Nelson - A radical inner city school teacher battles his demons with crack cocaine whilst trying to inspire his class.
  • Sugar - Miguel has dreamt all his life of leaving the Dominican Republican to play baseball professionally but he soon discovers it isn't all it's cracked up to be.

John Ford

  • Grapes of Wrath (1940) - Classic film adaptation of Steinbeck's superb book depicting dispossessed peasant farmers from Oklahoma migrate to California to become wage labourers.

John Flynn

  • Rolling Thunder - A tortured Vietnam veteran returns home to suburban America but nothing will be the same again.

John Frankenheimer

  • Seconds - When an middle aged man trades his identity and his face, he only realises what he's given up when it's too late.

William Friedkin

  • Sorcerer - Remake of Wages for Fear.

Brian Goodman

  • What Doesn't Kill You - A small time criminal struggles to pay the bills and support his family.

Colin Higgins

  • 9 to 5 (1980) - Comedy three female office workers realise their dream of overthrowing their sexist, egotistical and bigoted bosses.

Albert Hughes

  • Dead Presidents - A black Vietnam vet joins a political organisation funding itself with armed robbery, based on the story of Haywood T. Kirkland.

John Huston

Patty Jenkins

  • Monster (2003) - Crime drama based on the real story of a sex worker who was executed for killing six men.

Mike Judge

  • Office Space - When Peter sees an hypnotherapist, he inadvertently begins a refusal of work while his friends at the company are going to be made redundant and want revenge.

Jeremy Kagan

  • Katherine (1975, a.k.a. The Radical) - Low-budget TV movie based on the life of Diana Oughton of the Weather Underground urban guerrilla group, starring Henry Winkler of Fonzie fame.

Barbara Kopple

  • Harlan County USA - Documentary of the 1976 Brookside strike and the subsequent agreement.

Stanley Kubrick

  • Spartacus (1960) - Historical epic about the Spartacus slave rebellion.
  • The Killing - The robbery on a racetrack has been meticulously planned, but a scheming wife could end up getting someone killed, if they can pull it off.

Spike Lee

  • Do the Right Thing - Film set in a New York neighbourhood, where class and racial tensions collide on the hottest day of the summer.
  • Malcolm X - Biopic on the life of black power leader, Malcolm X, from his childhood through to his conversion to Islam in prison and his eventual split with the Nation of Islam.
  • Summer of Sam - Broad look at the white community in the South Bronx of 1977, with punk, disco and the serial killer Son of Sam raging over a summer.

Sidney Lumet

  • Network - When a news reporter is thrown off the air for voicing subversive opinions, the network see in him an opportunity to increase ratings.

Adrian Lyne

  • Jacob's Ladder - A Vietnam veteran suffers delusions from the alleged drug trials administered during the war.

Michael Mann

  • Heat - Work is the obsession for criminals and police alike, in this melancholy noir.
  • Collateral - One night with a taxi driver, whose fare is a hitman directing him to his jobs around the city.

Andrew Niccol

  • In Time - Time has replaced capital, and life runs out for those with nothing left on their clock.

Jeff Nichols

  • Take Shelter - A construction contractor struggles with the recession and his worsening grip on reality.

Mike Nichols

  • Silkwood - Based on the true story of Karen Silkwood, who raised concerns about radiation from the nuclear plant she worked at and was found dead in suspicious circumstances.

Kimberly Peirce

  • Boys Don't Cry (1999) - Powerful dramatisation of the real story of Brandon Teena, a young trans man who was brutally murdered by a group of male acquaintances after they discovered he had female genitalia.

Kevin Reynolds

  • Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) - Riproaring action flick about England's legendary folk hero, Robin Hood, who stole from the rich and gave to the poor.

Martin Ritt

  • Norma Rae - Inspired by a speech, a factory worker begins to organise at her workplace, based on the story of Crystal Lee Sutton.

Mark Romanek

  • Never Let Me Go (2010) - A love triangle develops between three friends coming-of-age in a dystopian England.

George Romero

  • Dawn of the Dead - 4 people hold up in a shopping centre as the zombies have taken over, and try to return to normality
  • Land of the Dead - The zombies begin organising against the last remaining human city in the US.

Stuart Rosenberg

  • Cool Hand Luke (1967) - A petty criminal refuses to conform to a brutal prison system and inspires his fellow inmates.

Gary Ross and Francis Lawrence

  • The Hunger Games (2012-2015) - 4-part film series of action film adaptations of the sci-fi novels of the same name by Suzanne Collins, where a teenage girl takes on a dystopian United States' dictatorial government.

Richard Sarafin

  • Vanishing Point - A car courier races across the country to make an impossible delivery, with an ending that symbolised the death of the hippie movement.

Tom Savini

  • Night of the Living Dead 1990 - Improved remake of the civil rights film with zombies, which places the damsel in distress of the original, Barbra, as a strong leader.

John Sayles

  • Matewan - The story of the Battle in Matewan, 1920, where miners fought private police.

Paul Schrader

  • Light Sleeper - An ageing drug dealer is faced with finding legitimate employment.
  • Blue Collar - 3 workers strapped for cash decide to rob their ineffectual union.
  • American Gigolo - A gigolo for the wealthy becomes embroiled in scandal when he falls for a senator's wife.

Martin Scorsese

  • Taxi Driver - Damaged Vietnam vet cum taxi driver battles with New York, and himself.
  • After Hours - A chance date for an office worker turns into a nightmare trying to get back home in time for tomorrow's shift.
  • Bringing Out the Dead - An overworked and conscientious ambulance driver begins to slip into insanity.

David Simon

  • Generation Kill (2008) - TV miniseries dramatising the journalistic account of a Rolling Stone journalist embedded in a US military unit in Iraq.
  • The Corner (2000) - TV miniseries looking at the lives of poor working class people in Baltimore against the background of the war on drugs.
  • The Wire (2002-8) - Widely considered the best TV show ever made, The Wire examines the major institutions of American society over five series, revealing the flaws of the police, the courts, the prisons, the media, politicians, organise crime and more.

Tarsem Singh

  • The Fall - A stuntman lies in the hospital bed, paralysed from his first film, where he befriends a small girl and loses himself in fantastical storytelling.

Gary Sinise

  • Of Mice and Men (1992) - Film adaptation of Steinbeck's book which follows two farm labourers who dream of owning their own land.

Mario Van Peebles

  • Panther - Film depicting the rise and fall of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, and the American government campaign against them. Based on real events but unfortunately with a big dose of Hollywood exaggeration, particularly at the end of the film.

Fred Zinneman

  • Behold a Pale Horse (1964) - Film loosely based on the life of anarchist guerrilla Sabate, it depicts an exiled Republican bandit who returns to Spain while police set a trap.

Various

  • Into the West (2005) - TV miniseries which tells the story of the birth of modern America from the perspective of Native Americans, and working class white and black people.

Argentinian

Santiago Grasso

  • Empleo - A man makes his way to work, finding people being used as objects.

Héctor Olivera

  • La Patagonia Rebelde - Based on anarchist Osvaldo Bayer's book, this is the true story of the massacre of FORA organised labourers in the 1920s.

Australian

Gillian Armstrong

  • My Brilliant Career (1979) - At the dawn of the 20th century a young woman in the Australian outback dreams of becoming a writer.

Belinda Cheyko

  • City Loop (2000, originally known as Bored Olives) - A group of bored pizzeria workers seek pleasure over the course of the night.

Andrew Dominik

  • Killing Them Softly - The Boston mob sends a hitman to kill those responsible for a card game robbery during the 2012 presidential election.

John Hillcoat

  • Ghosts of the Civil Dead - Both prison guards and prisoners are manipulated into a riot to secure funding for a new maximum security complex.

David Michod

  • Animal Kingdom (2010) - The gritty story of a teenager in a criminal family, and a detective who thinks he can save him.

George Miller

  • Mad Max and Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior - The defining films of what the apocalypse will look like, petrol has become the only commodity in a world of fast cars and dangerous roads.

Michael Rymer

  • Angel Baby - A man released from a mental institution struggles to stay healthy with a baby on the way and his first job in years.

Stephen Wallace

  • Stir - Written by an inmate involved, Stir shows what provoked the 1974 Bathurst Jail riots.

Belgian

Chantal Akerman

  • Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975) - Film which follows a single-mother and sex worker as she monotonously goes through the tasks of housework and daily reproduction in real time.

Agnes Varda

  • Cleo From 5 To 7 (1961) - A young woman walks round Paris as she waits for the results of a medical examination – a finely observed study of anxiety and the search for hope.

British

Andrea Arnold

  • Fish Tank (2009) - A volatile 15-year-old girl lives with her mother in East London council estate, and her mother's boyfriend becomes attracted to her. Trigger warning for domestic violence and underage sex.
  • Red Road (2006) - A female CCTV operator in Glasgow spots a man from her past and begins to monitor him. Trigger warning for sexual violence.

Roy Battersby

  • Leeds United! (1974) - This film tells the story of the 1970 wildcat strike by around 30,000 mostly female textile workers in Leeds, who battled the employers and their own union.

Alan Bleasdale

  • Boys from the Blackstuff (1982) - 6 part TV miniseries looking at the lives of intermittently-employed casual Liverpudlian tarmac workers.
  • GBH (1991) - 7 part TV miniseries with a fictionalised account of Derek Hatton of Militant running Liverpool Council in the 1980s.

Charlie Chaplin

  • Modern Times (1936) - Chaplin plays a factory worker overwhelmed by the machinery of his workplace, and depicts the impact of the great depression on working people.
  • The Great Dictator (1940) - A satirical spoof on Hitler produced during World War II, as Chaplin portrays both anti-Semitic dictator and his doppelgänger, a Jewish barber. Contains one of the most memorable speeches in film history.
  • The Immigrant (1917) - A silent romantic comedy in which Chaplin plays a migrant to the US who is accused of theft on his voyage.
  • The Kid (1921) - Chaplin's first full-length film, where his "Tramp" character adopts a child abandoned by his unwed mother and they become partners in crime.

Alan Clarke

  • Scum - Nihilistic drama set in a young offenders institute.
  • Elephant - Experimental short about the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Nigel Cole

  • Made in Dagenham (2010) - Dramatisation of the 1968 strike by female workers at Ford's plant in Dagenham, Essex, for pay parity with men.

Paddy Considine

  • Tyrannosaur - A bitter alcoholic finds salvation in a woman who seems to be perfect on the outside, but harbours an unhappy secret.

Bill Douglas

  • My Childhood (1972) - Autobiographical first part of a trilogy set in Scotland in the 1940s. Set in a mining village with material and emotional poverty, this is about as far from Hollywood cinema as you can get.

Terry Gilliam

  • Brazil (1985) - Dystopian epic in which a low level state bureaucrat who escapes the drudgery of his job into flights of fancy, becomes embroiled in a real adventure when he attempts to resolve a financial irregularity.

Mark Herman

  • Brassed Off (1996) - Comedy drama about the difficulties faced by a colliery brass band when its pit is facing closure.

Duncan Jones

  • Moon - The moon has been colonised, and is manned for 3 years. Sam Bell is coming to the end of his contract when he begins to experience hallucinations.

Mike Leigh

  • Naked - A drifter meets similarly lost souls whilst living on the streets of London.

Ken Loach

  • Ae Fond Kiss… (2004) - Sparks fly in Glasgow when an Asian man begins a relationship with a white woman.
  • Cathy Come Home (1966) - Hugely influential, documentary-style feature length TV special highlighting issues of homelessness, unemployment and social services. Housing charity Shelter was set up in its wake.
  • Kes (1969) - A young English working class boy spends his spare time caring for his pet kestrel.
  • Land and Freedom (1995) - Loose adaptation of George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia, following the [url =/tags/poum] POUM [/url] fighting in the Spanish Revolution.
  • Sweet Sixteen (2002) - Determined to have a normal life once his mother gets out of prison, a Scottish teenager tries to save money for a home.
  • Riff Raff (1991) - Comedy following the everyday lives of a construction worker, his girlfriend and an unemployed pop star.
  • The Navigators (2001) - Film following five railway workers affected by the 1995 privatisation of British Rail and how this changes their lives.
  • The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006) - Against the backdrop of the Irish War of Independence, two brothers fighting the resistance to the British, but take two different paths.

Steve McQueen

  • 12 Years a Slave (2013) - Powerful dramatisation of the tale of Solomon Northup, a free African-American who was kidnapped into slavery.

Shane Meadows

  • This is England, This is England '86 and This is England '88 - Documenting a group of skinheads as they grow up in a northern town.
  • Dead Man's Shoes - A Gulf War veteran returns his home town to dish out revenge to local gangsters responsible for an unknown crime.

Sam Mendes

  • Jarhead (2005) - A realistic look at the daily life of US troops in the first Iraq war, and the boredom and isolation they face.

Lewis Milestone

  • Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) - Dramatisation of the famous mutiny against authoritarian Capt Bligh.

Gary Oldman

  • Nil by Mouth - Life for an extended family on a South London council estate.

Tony Richardson

Ridley Scott

  • Alien - Space workers are hunted down by an unnatural force.
  • Blade Runner - Four androids look to extend their lifespan whilst being hunted by a policeman, in a dystopic Los Angeles.

Martin Stellman

  • For Queen and Country (1988) - Denzel Washington stars as a discharged British paratrooper who returns from the Falklands, re-enter civilian life and faces poverty, racism and discrimination.

Matthew Warchus

  • Pride (2014) - Utterly superb dramatisation of the story of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners: a group of gay men and lesbians based on London who collected money to support miners on strike 1984-5.

Canadian

Gary Burns

  • Waydowntown - Office workers bet their salaries who can last the longest without stepping outside, using Calgary's skywalks to get around.

Chilean

Gonzalo Justiniano

  • Candy or Mint (1990) - Niki and his friends are members of the marginalised underclass living on the outskirts of Santiago. During Chile's transition from dictatorship to democracy (1988-1990), they forge a path from drug- and drink-fuelled nihilism and petty crime into the world of market-driven illegality and Niki begins a seemingly predestined relationship with the middle-class "loca", Manuela.

Pablo Larrain

  • Fuga - The manuscript of a composer is rediscovered by students. They learn how he came to wrote it, and how it was sent him to an asylum.
  • Tony Manero - A man obsessed with the character from Saturday Night Fever is due to enter a television contest to crown the best Manero impersonator, whilst Pinochet's disappearances carry on in the background.

Chinese

Tsai Ming-liang

  • Rebels of a Neon God - A pair of friends make their living robbing arcade machine chips.

Li Yang

  • Blind Shaft - Two men killing miners for compensation find a conscience.

Jia Zhangke

  • Unknown Pleasures - Two unemployed friends chain smoke and wander about.

Danish

Nicolas Winding Refn

  • Pusher trilogy - Interconnected stories of drug dealers falling from grace in Copenhagen.
  • Drive - A single mother falls for a moonlighter who'll do anything to protect her.

Thomas Vinterberg

  • The Celebration (1998, aka Festen) - At a big celebration of a bourgeois family, a secret emerges. Warning for discussion of themes which some find triggering.

Dutch

Paul Verhoeven

  • Starship Troopers (1997) - Argentinian Aryans fight bugs in space.
  • Total Recall (1990) - Sci-fi action classic, in which a construction worker in a dystopian future goes to have memories implanted of a trip to Mars, where there is an ongoing rebellion.

Finnish

Aki Kaurismäki

  • Shadows in Paradise - A binman falls in love with a supermarket checkout girl he sees on his rounds.

French

Jacques Becker

  • Le Trou - Four tight knit prisoners have been preparing their breakout for months when a new cellmate is added. Can they trust him?

Jean-Louis Comolli

  • La Cecilia - Based on Giovanni Rossi's memoirs of the little known Colonia Cecilia, the Brazilian emperor offers land to anarchists to create a commune. But tensions grow as they try to shake off the beliefs of the old world.

Henri-Georges Clouzot

  • Wages of Fear - A group of destitute men in South America agree to drive explosives across the country in a bid to escape.

Catherine Breillat

  • Fat Girl (2001) - Controversial film centring on the relationship between two sisters, 15 and 12 years, and their attitudes to sex - it is a cruel though perhaps honest depiction – the result is dark and disturbing.

Christine Edzard

  • Little Dorrit (1987) - Critically acclaimed two-part screen adaption of Dickens’ teeming novel of corruption, capitalism and greed.

Marin Karmitz

  • Blow for Blow (1972) - Film about a wildcat strike at a textile plant in rural France. Produced in a democratic manner, the film mixes actors with real workers playing themselves and falls somewhere between being a documentary and a work of fiction.

Louis Malle

  • Viva Maria! (1965) - Comedy adventure starring Brigitte Bardot. Two women meet in Central America in 1907 and become revolutionaries.
    Jean Vigo

    • Zero for Conduct (1933) - Featurette by the anarchist director depicting the bureaucratic and repressive school system. The film was swiftly banned in France until 1946.

    German

    Fatih Akin

    • Head On -Two people of Turkish descent in Germany hospitalised for attempted suicide decide to have a sham marriage, to free Sibyl from her conservative Muslim family.

    Slatan Dudow

    • To Whom Does the World Belong - The trials and tribulations of an unemployable Berlin family.

    Werner Herzog

    • Strozeck (1977) - In Berlin, an alcoholic man leaves prison, joins an elderly friend and the prostitute and tries to realise history of leaving Germany and moving to Wisconsin.

    Phil Jutzi

    • Mother Krause's Journey to Happiness - A family struggle in poverty in Weimar Germany, finding salvation too late.

    Fritz Lang

    • Metropolis - An industrialist's son swaps places with a worker and agitates for insurrection, having fallen for a schoolteacher.

    Volker Schlöndorff

    • Coup de grace - The Russian Revolution is on the doorstep of a Prussian army camp in Latvia, as sexual tensions grow.

    Margarethe von Trotta

    • Marianne and Julianne (1981, aka The German Sisters) - Based on the real life sisters associated with the Baader- Meinhof group, von Trotta explores the complexity of the sister’s relationship and of women’s resistance and revolt.

    Henner Winckler

    • Lucy - A teenage mother has to decide whether she wants the responsibility of bringing up a child.

    Hong Kong

    Fruit Chan

    • The Longest Summer - British soldiers made redundant after the handover of Hong Kong decide to rob a bank.

    Johnnie To

    • Life Without Principle - Austerity noir, following different people's lives affected by the economic crisis.

    Wong Kar-wai

    • In the Mood for Love - A couple, whose respective spouses are cheating with one another, deny themselves from doing the same, in a seductive account of conservative 1960s Hong Kong.

    Hungarian

    Miklós Jancsó

    • The Red and the White - Scenic look at the reprisals by both communists and White Guards during the Russian Revolution.

    Icelandic

    Dagur Kári

    • Noi the Albino - A truant teenager falls in love with a girl in a diner and dreams of escaping his seaside home.

    Irish

    Joe Comerford

    • Traveller (1981) - On a smuggling journey into Northern Ireland a young woman traveller tells her husband of her father’s violent sexual attacks. Trigger warning.

    Jim Sheridan

    • The Field (1990) - West Coast tenant farmer Bull McCabe (Richard Harris) asserts a moral right to a field he has created and worked for years, as he refuses to accept the idea that there can be a market in land.

    Italian

    Guido Chiesa

    • Working Slowly - Film set amongst the youth movement in 1970s Bologna, with the refusal of work, sexual freedom and cultural provocations it entailed. Made with the collaboration of the Wu Ming Foundation, it covers the radical pirate radio station Radio Alice and the 1977 rebellion.
    • Johnny the Partisan - Story of an English literature student who escapes into the mountains to join the Italian resistance of fascism.

    Sergio Corbucci

    • The Great Silence - Bleak Western set in a snowy blizzard. A mute gunslinger tries to defend a town from outlaws.

    Giuseppe De Santis

    • Bitter Rice (1949) - A good example of Italian neorealist filmmaking, Bitter Rice begins at the start of the rice-planting season in northern Italy. In an effort to escape the law two small-time thieves hide amongst the crowds of female workers heading to the rice fields of the Po Valley.

    Vittorio De Sica

    • Bicycle Thieves (1948) - Story of a poor father searching post-World War II Rome for his stolen bicycle, without which he will lose the job which was to be the salvation of his young family.

    Marco Tullio Giordana

    • One Hundred Steps - The true story of Giuseppe Impastato, a communist anti-mafia campaigner in Sicily, set against the backdrop of Italian politics in the 1970s.

    Sergio Leone

    • Duck, You Sucker (1971, aka A Fistful of Dynamite) - Superb spaghetti Western, in English, where an IRA explosives expert gets involved with a group of amoral Mexican bandits amidst the Mexican Revolution.

    Marco Leto

    • Black Holiday (1973, aka La Villeggiatura) - A liberal professor of law is interned on a prison island at the time of Fascism, where he finally gets a political education from the working class prisoners.

    Daniele Luchetti

    • My Brother is an Only Child - Story of two brothers in a working class Italian family, one who becomes a Communist while the other decides to become a fascist.

    Giuliano Montaldo

    Ermanno Olmi

    • Il Posto - A school leaver enters into the world of work whilst falling in love for the first time.

    Elio Petri

    • The Working Class Goes to Heaven - Operaismo inspired film of a Stakhanovite factory worker turning radical. The star, Gian Maria Volonte, was a real member of the Italian Communist Party.
    • Investigation of a Citizen Above Suspicion - Dramatic, psychological crime film in which Gian Maria Volonte plays a top police officer who murders his girlfriend and plants obvious clues to test whether other officers would charge him for his crime.

    Roberto Rossellini

    • Rome, Open City - Classic film about a working class Italian partisan, fighting fascism during the last days of the Nazi's occupation of Rome.
    • Paisan - Film split into six different episodes covering all of Italy towards the end of the Second World War, from the Americans landing in Sicily to the Venetian resistance to fascism in the north.

    Paolo and Vittorio Taviani

    • Padre Padrone (1977) - A classic film based on fact, a boy aged six is taken from school into the mountains where he works alone for years as his father’s shepherd – until he breaks free.

    Lina Wertmuller

    • Seven Beauties (1975) - A controversial film of a man’s ignoble survival in World War II - a mix of farce and satire, of some interest and very unpleasant.

    Iranian

    Jafar Panahi

    • Offside (2006) - A female fan tries illegally to slip into the Iranian football team’s 2005 World Cup qualifying tie against Bahrain.

    Marjane Satrapi

    • Persepolis - Adaptation of the comic, a girl growing up begins to question the Iranian revolution.

    Jamaican

    Perry Henzell

    • The Harder They Come (1972) - A memorable story of poverty, drugs, corruption and an inevitable confrontation with authority - and possibly the best soundtrack ever!

    Japanese

    Hideo Gosha

    • Red Lion / Akage (1969) -"Gonzo (Toshiro Mifune), a member of the Imperial Restoration Force, is being asked by the emperor to deliver official news to his home village of a New World Order. Wanting to pose as a military officer, he dons the Red Lion Mane of Office. Upon his return, his attempt to tell the village about a brand-new tax cut is quashed when the townfolk mistakenly assumes that he is there to rescue them from corrupt government officials. He learns that an evil magistrate has been swindling them for years. Now, he has to help the village, ward off Shogunate fanatics, along with the fact that he can't read his own proclamations."

      Yuujii Makiguchi

      • Virgin Breaker Yuki (1976) - (trigger warnings for rape/torture). This film depicts prostitutes and anarchists in Kyoto just after the Peace Preservation Law was passed in 1925.

      Masaki Kobayashi

      • Harakiri - When his son-in-law is killed begging for charity, Tsugumo visits the lord responsible to commit suicide. But only after he's told his story.
      • Samurai Rebellion - A clan lord orders a marriage between his mistress and the son of one of his swordsmen. When the lord changes his mind, the couple would rather die than be apart and his men are on their way.

      Eiichi Kudō

      • Castle of Owls - The Toyotomi clan has declared peace. To stimulate business, a weapons merchant hires a ninja to assassinate its leader. But he begins to question whether his code is more important than his happiness.

      Akira Kurosawa

      • Ikiru (1952) - A bureaucrat struggles to find meaning in life when he discovers he has a terminal illness.

      Yasujiro Ozu

      • Late Spring (1949) and Early Summer (1951) - A very moving film of a young woman who gives up her independence to take care of her aging father.

      Masahiro Shinoda

      • Samurai Spy - With the new shogun, war has ended. But the clans still vie for power and spies wander amongst them in Shinoda's Cold War allegory.

      Hiroyuki Tanaka

      • Kanikosen - Film adaptation of Takiji Kobayashi's The Cannery Ship. Crab fishermen attempt to take control of the ship out at sea.

      Mexican

      Guillermo del Toro

      • Pan's Labyrinth (2006) - In the fascist Spain of 1944, the stepdaughter of a sadistic army officer in a remote outpost escapes into an intriguing fantasy world.

      Norwegian

      Bent Hamer

      • O'Horten - As a train driver finishes his last day before retirement, he wonders what to do with the rest of his life.
      • Factotum - Faithful adaptation of Bukowski's novel, as well as some of his short stories.

      Palestinian

      Hany Abu-Assad

      • Paradise Now (2005) - The film follows two Palestinian childhood friends who had been recruited to perform suicide bombings in Tel Aviv.

      Polish

      Wojciech Has

      • Petla - An alcoholic tries to quit drinking over 24 hours.

      Alek Wasilewski

      • Lucky Day Forever - Prole 514 hopes to win the lottery, never having to work again. But when he does, is he any happier?
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      Romanian

      Radu Mihaileanu

      • Live and Become (2005) - It's 1980 and the black Falashas in Ethiopia have been recognised as Jews and given the right to go to Israel. This film tells the story of one Christian boy who goes in the place of a Jewish woman's son who died, and faces racism in Israel.

      Russian

      Yakov Protazanov

      • Aelita - Communists travel into space to help Martians with their revolution.

      Senegalese

      Ousmane Sembène

      • Black Girl (1966) - About a a girl from Senegal hired by a wealthy French family to nanny but is then mistreated and effectively enslaved in their home, with tragic consequences.

      South African

      Neill Blomkamp

      • District 9 - Alluding to the District Six evictions in apartheid and the more recent Blikkiesdorp settlement, District 9 sees aliens come to Earth. But when they arrive, they are a minority group just like any other, and are hated by both black and white in South Africa.
      • Elysium (2013) - In 2154, the rich live on Elysium, an enormous luxurious space station, while the poor and working class scrape by on a dystopian Earth. One man, played by Matt Damon, goes on a mission for equality in this action blockbuster.

      Bronwen Hughes

      • Stander - The embellished story of Andre Stander, a cop who turned bank robber, set in and around the Soweto uprising.

      South Korean

      Lee Chang-dong

      • Peppermint Candy - As Yongho stands on a track waiting for a train, he has a series of flashbacks to explain what has driven him to suicide; heartbreak, compulsory military service, the police force and bankruptcy.

      Park Chan-wook

      • I'm a Cyborg, but That's Okay (2006) - Romantic comedy in which a female production line worker begins to believe she is a robot and is committed to a psychiatric institution.
      • Sympathy for Mr Vengeance (2002) - A deaf factory worker made redundant and his anarchist girlfriend kidnap his boss' daughter for a ransom.

      Park Kwang-su

      • A Single Spark - The story of Jeon Tae-il, a textile worker who self immolated in protest of poor conditions.

      Shin Dong-il

      • Bandhobi - A Bangladeshi worker trying to retrieve his stolen wages receives help from a schoolgirl.

      Yoo Young-sik

      • Anarchists (2000) - Action film set in 1924 Shanghai as a group of Korean anarchists embark on a campaign of propaganda by deed against the Japanese occupation of Korea.

      Spanish

      Vicente Aranda

      • Libertarias - The Mujeres Libres battle in the Spanish Revolution, with liberated sex workers and a nun in tow. Trigger warning, features a rape scene.
      • Riders of the Dawn (1990) - Marian dreams of owning the spa resort where she works. But her life, as well as everyone else's, is changed with the Asturian uprising of 1934 and later civil war.

      Fernando Arrabal

      • The Tree of Guernica - Irreverent take on the Spanish Civil War set in the Basque region of Guernica, where both communists and Francoists await the fighting.

      Fernando León de Aranoa

      • Mondays in the Sun - A group of shipworkers made redundant try to come to terms with the death of the shipping industry, a lack of jobs and financial troubles.

      Luis Bunuel

      • The Exterminating Angel (1962) - Macabre comedy in which bourgeois guests at a dinner party find themselves incapable of leaving the room, and descend into base savagery.

      Jose Luis Cuerda

      • Butterfly’s Tongue (1999) - It’s Spain 1936, a young boy grows to like his teacher and develop a thirst for learning – however war is coming and with it fear and betrayal.

      Álex de la Iglesia

      • 800 Bullets - Former stuntmen operate a theme park on the sets they filmed their spaghetti westerns on. When a real estate mogul buys up the land and threatens to send in the riot police, they decide to wait for them.

      Victor Erice

      • The Spirit of The Beehive (1973) - It’s rural Spain 1940 – seen mainly through the eyes of a seven year old girl – the adults behaviour is constricted with fear and memories of crushed dreams too painful to be voiced. The girl and her sister watch the 1931 classic movie ‘Frankenstein’ which ignites her imagination, and could lead her into danger.

      Swedish

      Per Åhlin

      • Journey to Melonia (1989) - Animated film about a beautiful paradise island, Melonia, which is under threat from the industry island Plutonia, which is governed by two greedy managers who keep small children as their slaves in the factories.

      Roy Andersson

      • Songs from the Second Floor (2000) - A look at different aspects of modern life and work through a series of disconnected vignettes.

      Pernilla August

      • Beyond (2010) - Drama dealing with the destiny which many of the Finnish guest workers who came to Sweden to work in textile factories, mills and forestry during the 1960's and 70's, centered on a young woman's experiences growing up in a home riddled with abuse and alcoholism.

      Peter Birro

      • Take up the Struggle (2008) - 4 episode miniseries chronicling the coming of age of 4 different youths growing up in the Swedish working class port town of Gothenburg.

      Lena Ewert and Lasse Westman

      • Comrades, our enemies are well-organized (1972) - The story of a wildcat strike in the iron ore fields in the far north of Sweden in December 1969.

      Lukas Moodysson

      • Together - Comedy set in 1970s Stockholm, in which a woman leaves her violent husband and moves, with her children, to the Tillsammans ('Together' in Swedish) commune where her brother lives.

      Göran Hugo Olsson

      • The Black Power Mixtape (2012) - An award winning compilation feature documentary that displays the story of the African-American community 1967-1975, the people, the society and the style that fueled a change. Told with sparkling, beautiful and deep footage, lost in the archives in Sweden for 30 years.

      Niels Arden Oplev

      • The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2009, aka Men Who Hate Women ) - Film series about a young hacker and a journalist battling corrupt officials, industrialists and anti-Semites.

      Gabriela Pichler

      • Eat Sleep Die (2012) - When the forceful young Muslim Swedish/Balkan "take-no-shit" factory worker Raša loses her job, she faces the system of unemployment. With no high school diploma, no job Raša finds herself on collision course with society and its contradictable values and expectations.

      Jan Troell

      • Everlasting Moments (2008) - Based on the true story of Maria Larsson, a Swedish working class woman in the early 20th century, who wins a camera in a lottery and goes on to become a photographer.

      Thomas Vinterberg

      • Dear Wendy - In a mining town, a group of misfits create a pacifist gun club. They make a rule never to draw their guns, but when the police become involved, they find it difficult to keep to their promise.

      Bo Widerberg

      • Ådalen '31 (1969) - During a strike strike-breakers are being transported to Sandviken, where they are assaulted by the strikers. The military are sent in. On the 14th May 1931 there is a confrontation between demonstrators and the military who open fire and five people are killed and five injured.
      • Joe Hill (1971) - Biopic on the life and death of the legendary Swedish/American agitator Joe Hill.

      Thai

      Pen-Ek Ratanaruang

      • Headshot - A disgraced cop joins a secret organisation targeting politicians and businessmen.

      Turkish

      Yilmaz Guney and Serik Goren

      • Yol (1982) - Following the 1980 military takeover Turkey is depicted as an open prison with soldiers regulating everyday life. From a closed prison five inmates are paroled for a week – the film follows their separate journeys home and shows how medieval customs and religion are equally enslaving.

      Yugoslavian

      Bahrudin Čengić

      • Role of My Family in World Revolution (1971) - After World War II, a group of partisans go to stay with a wealthy family. The family soon begins to forget their old ways.

      Želimir Žilnik

      • Early Works (1969) - Inspired by Marx's Capital, three men and a woman decide to try to wake socialist conscience within the working class and peasantry, without much success.

Comments

flaneur

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by flaneur on April 30, 2013

Still have more to do on this, but has anyone female directed films to suggest?

Auld-bod

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Auld-bod on April 30, 2013

Here are a few suggestions.

Japan
Mikio Naruse
Repast
A wife though her daily routines, coupled with her husband’s attitudes recognises the boring futility of her existence and is forced to confront her own future.

When A Woman Ascends The Stairs
This is the moving story of a widow being slowly crushed in a patriarchal society.

Floating Clouds
The film is a story of two lovers trying to fit into to a society in which they are placed - an impossible situation – she with the need to survive and he to conform to the social norm.

Greece
Costa Gavras
Z
Using events leading up to the Greek military coup, when it was first released this caused political waves – in one London cinema I saw the audience applaud at the end!

State Of Siege {Etat de Siege}
Using the Tupamaro guerrillas vs. the CIA as the story’s framework it is an interesting and exciting watch, though it is also sadly short of any political analysis.

New Zealand (1990)
Jane Campion
An Angel At My Table
The story of Janet Frame one of New Zealand’s best known authors who from humble beginnings and the insensitive treatment of the authorities finally manages to establish her sanity and gain recognition. It’s a masterpiece of passionate film making.

The Piano (1993)
A story of a strong willed woman who has to fight for what she wants in a hostile environment among uncultivated men.

Poland
Agnieszka Holland
Olivier, Olivier (1992)
Based on a true story, this is a brutal war story of a Jewish boy who survived the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, then the Nazi take over at the time of operation Barbarossa - he eventually joins the Hitler Youth (the images of him desperately trying to stretch his circumcised foreskin in a toilet cubical is excruciating).

Entdinglichung

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Entdinglichung on April 30, 2013

loads of good films: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_neorealism

Steven.

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Steven. on April 30, 2013

Hey, thanks for doing this! But yeah some more stuff by a broader range of directors would be good.

I will have a think of a couple of things to add. I can think of a couple of Italian films and spaghetti westerns for example

flaneur

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by flaneur on April 30, 2013

The problem is there's a lack of women film directors in general. In this country I only know of Andrea Arnold and Lynne Ramsey and someone like Kathryn Bigalow is a one off in terms of making blockbusters.

Steven.

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Steven. on May 1, 2013

Yeah, I know - I was thinking about black directors as well, and films from Eastern Europe and Africa.

I've seen a few potential Eastern European ones, but will have to do try and remember the names…

Auld-bod

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Auld-bod on May 1, 2013

Gillian Armstrong
My Brilliant Career (1979)
At the dawn of the 20th century a young woman in the Australian outback dreams of becoming a writer – beautifully composed and slow paced with no three second cuts.

Belgium
Agnes Varda
Cleo From 5 To 7 {Cleo de 5 a 7} (1961?)
A young woman walks round Paris as she waits for the results of a medical examination – a finely observed study of anxiety and the search for hope.

France
Catherine Breillat
A Ma Soeur! {aka Fat Girl} (2001)
Controversial film centring on the relationship between two sisters, 15 and 12 years, and their attitudes to sex - it is a cruel though perhaps honest depiction – the result is dark and disturbing.

Germany
Margarethe von Trotta
Marianne and Julianne {aka The German Sisters} (1981)
Based on the real life sisters associated with the Baader-Meinhof group, von Trotta explores the complexity of the sister’s relationship and of women’s resistance and revolt.

Italy
Lina Wertmuller
Seven Beauties (1975)
A controversial film of a man’s ignoble survival in World War II - a mix of farce and satire, of some interest and very unpleasant (some critics loved it).

Paolo & Vittorio Taviani
Padre Padrone (1977)
A classic film based on fact, a boy aged six is taken from school into the mountains where he works alone for years as his father’s shepherd – until he breaks free.

Japan
Yasujiro Ozu
Late Spring (1949)
A very moving film of a young woman who gives up her independence to take care of her aging father – her story continues in ‘Early Summer’ (1951).

USA
Kathryn Bigelow
Strange Days (1995)
An enjoyable if flawed sci-fi action movie, part of which seeks to investigate the nature of voyeurism via memory implants.

Auld-bod

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Auld-bod on May 1, 2013

Britain
Christine Edzard
Little Dorrit (1987) Part 1: Nobody’s Fault; Part 2: Little Dorrit’s Story
Terrific screen adaption of Dickens’ teeming novel of corruption, capitalism and greed – a super cast of over 200 and especially good is Max Wall as the gnarled Flintwinch.

Entdinglichung

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Entdinglichung on May 1, 2013

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sur_%28film%29

Entdinglichung

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Entdinglichung on May 1, 2013

a few more:

- Vai viegli būt jaunam? (1987, "Is It Easy to Be Young?") a brilliant Soviet-Latvian documentary

The movie speaks about young people who perished as a result of growing up in Soviet society - their conflicts with parents and society, the patronizing attitudes of their teachers and the authorities, the fear that there is no meaning to their lives. Among the young people portrayed are high-schoolers looking for their place in life, a young mother worried about the future of her daughter after the Chernobyl catastrophe, a young man follower of the Hare Krishna movement (an 'unusual' religion that was discouraged even more than 'usual' ones by the Soviet government), as well young adults returning from compulsory military service in the Soviet war in Afghanistan and having become ones of 'the lost generation'. The film's opening scene documents a concert by the banned Latvian rock band, Pērkons.

- Rocker (Germany, 1972), set in the semi-criminal biker milieu of Hamburg, the participants are not professional actors but bikers who play more or less themselves

two Italian neo-realist classics:

- Bitter Rice (1949)

Bitter Rice begins at the start of the rice-planting season in northern Italy. In an effort to escape the law two small-time thieves, Francesca (Doris Dowling) and Walter (Vittorio Gassman), hide amongst the crowds of female workers heading to the rice fields of the Po Valley. While attempting to board the train for the fields the pair runs into Silvana (Silvana Mangano), a peasant rice worker. Francesca boards the train with Silvana, who introduces her to the planter's way of life. Francesca does not have a work permit, and struggles with the other "illegals" (known as "scabs") to find a place on the rice fields. After initial resistance from documented workers and bosses, the scabs are allowed a place in the fields. At the fields Silvana and Francesca meet a soon-to-be-discharged soldier, Marco (Raf Vallone), who unsuccessfully tries to attract Silvana's interest. Soon after, Walter tracks Francesca down at the rice fields and plots to steal rice from the storehouses during the celebration at the end of the planting season. Silvana is attracted by what she sees as the glamour of Walter's wealth, and becomes his new partner in crime. Francesca, meanwhile, is disenchanted with her former criminal lifestyle.

- Bicycle Thieves (1948)

Story of a poor father searching post-World War II Rome for his stolen bicycle, without which he will lose the job which was to be the salvation of his young family.

someone told me that there are a number of good Bengali films, has anyone watched http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Bigha_Zamin

Entdinglichung

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Entdinglichung on May 1, 2013

Lukas Moodysson

Together - Comedy set in 1970s Stockholm, in which a woman leaves her violent husband and moves, with her children, to the Tillsammans ('Together' in Swedish) commune where her brother lives.

with a member of the Stalinist KFML(r) living in the commune who only agrees to sleep with a fellow inhabitant after she agrees to discuss "value and surplus value" with him after having sex

Auld-bod

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Auld-bod on May 1, 2013

I have not seen ‘Do Bigha Zamin’ it sounds good.

The only Bengali films I remember seeing were Satyajit Ray’s Apu Trilogy (‘Panther Panchali’, ‘Aparajito’ and ‘The World of Apu’).

My memory is that they are deceptively simple films though each carries a deep emotional impact. Basically Apu’s family struggles to survive as he grows and gains an education. Luckily the last film is also the best – though all are realistic and carry the belief in the ultimate survival of the human spirit.

Auld-bod

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Auld-bod on May 1, 2013

Iran
Jafar Panahi
Offside (2006)
Shot in situ, the Iranian football team’s 2005 World Cup qualifying tie against Bahrain is the movies focus where the main character tries to slip into the fixture - the problem is she is not legally allowed to attend (being of the female kind). The sequences outside the ground with the corralled Tehrani women who have been discovered is memorable – most of the women are indomitable and the soldiers are largely bored or dejected.

copasetic64

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by copasetic64 on May 1, 2013

I would add Mike Leigh to British, as well as the 60s kitchen sink dramas such as saturday Night Sunday Morning; Alfie; This Sporting Life; Loneliness of A Long Distance Runner. And Kes under Ken Loach too

Steven.

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Steven. on May 1, 2013

Also: Matewan, Harlan County War, Salt of the Earth, In Time, Total Recall

teh

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by teh on May 1, 2013

I think that you should mention in the intro that many of these films are made by people with conservative or Stalinist leanings and as such their views are mirrored in their interpretations of working class life.
--
I disagree that the Living Dead remake was an improvement. I felt it was gratuitous as a remake and film critics and audiences generally didnt feel it was better either. While the original popularized the tripping and falling while being chased by a monster trope I disagree that it should be disparaged as engaging in damsel in distress tripe. All of the characters in the movie where in distress and Barbara was not the only female character in the film. She just saw her brother get killed by a dead person. Its a much more rational response. The strong leaders were a bunch of idiots who got everyone killed, with the state showing up to indiscriminately finish them off. The silly bickering about/between the upstairs and the downstairs reflects the conservative confusion/reaction against the prol violence of 68. In this respect Romeros '73 The Crazies- about a pair of anarchy firefighters caught in a middle of a virus epidemic that causes among the infected national liberation armed struggle and 'going postal' killings- is much better satire then his latter- like the remake- zombie films.
--
Stuff to include: The Taviani brothers made a bunch of movies about anarchists in the 70's and 80's. Not sure how many of them are appropriate for this list. Everything by Rienar Fassbinder; Nagisa Oshima, Derek Jarman. If you like really slow and boring realism dos Santos's Vidas Secas is the best movie ever.

Fleur

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Fleur on May 2, 2013

There's a lot of really good movies here, plus loads that I haven't seen and I'll have to check out. There seems to me to be a huge omission though, someone who knew about growing up in extreme poverty - Charlie Chaplin. The Immigrant, The Kid, The Gold Rush, Modern Times. Not exactly the cutting edge of modern cinema and a bit sentimental if you have a cynical head on, but probably some of the most popular films ever with working class characters at the heart of the stories and the rich, the bosses, the police as the villains and the butt of the jokes.

Chilli Sauce

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Chilli Sauce on May 2, 2013

'They Live' (obviously)
Maybe 'Brazil'
'Of Mice and Men'

Auld-bod

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Auld-bod on May 2, 2013

Ireland
Joe Comerford
Traveller (1981)
On a smuggling journey into Northern Ireland a young woman traveller tells her husband of her father’s violent sexual attacks.

Jim Sheridan
The Field (1990)
West Coast tenant farmer Bull McCabe (Richard Harris) asserts a moral right to a field he has created and worked for years, as he refuses to accept the idea that there can be a market in land - with good acting and an even handed telling of the story.

Auld-bod

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Auld-bod on May 5, 2013

Jamaica
Perry Henzell
The Harder They Come (1972)
A memorable story of poverty, drugs, corruption and an inevitable confrontation with authority - and possibly the best soundtrack ever!

USA
Stuart Rosenberg
Cool Hand Luke (1967)
A petty criminal refuses to conform to a brutal prison system and inspires his fellow inmates – with great performances.

Chilli Sauce

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Chilli Sauce on May 3, 2013

Spartacus?

RedEd

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by RedEd on May 5, 2013

Shane Meadows seems to make films in line with the intention of the thread. I've seen three. Dead Man's Shoes is about 'friends' abusing a disabled person, drug use/dealing and post traumatic stress disorder in squadies. This is England is about the racist take over of a working class subculture (in this case Skins) and how kids get involved in subcultures, for good and bad, in the first place. Somers Town is about a kid who runs away from his abusive father and tries to eke out an existence in London, doing so with the help of his new found friend, a Polish immigrant whose dad does not initially know what's going on.

bastarx

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by bastarx on May 6, 2013

Mad Max is a glorification of police death squads.

Werner Harding

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Werner Harding on May 6, 2013

Don't know if anyone mentioned this, but for female directed films I'd say Monster and maybe Vagabond (I personally don't like vagabond)

Also, On the Water Front is an antithesis of what this list is going for, but it is interesting to see why.

Auld-bod

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Auld-bod on May 6, 2013

Italy
Marco Leto
Black Holiday (aka La Villeggiatura) (1973)
A liberal professor of law is interned on a prison island at the time of Fascism, where he finally gets a political education from the working class prisoners.

thekidsarepissed

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by thekidsarepissed on May 8, 2013

Three films that lend themselves to a materialist feminist viewing and discussion:

-The 1975 French film "Jeanne Dielman, 23, Quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles" which follows a single-mother and sex worker as she monotonously goes through the tasks of housework and daily reproduction in real time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Dielman,_23_quai_du_Commerce,_1080_Bruxelles

-The 1966 Senegalese film "Black Girl" about a a girl from Senegal hired by a bourgeois French family to nanny, though mostly she just ends up doing housework. Her wages are withheld and she is essentially enslaved within the home, eventually driving her to commit suicide.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Girl_(film)

-The 1983 American film "Born In Flames" about a post-revolutionary social democratic NYC in which gender and race issues have not been solves. The film is mockumentary and follows to women's guerrilla groups, one majority white and one majority POC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_in_Flames

jef costello

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by jef costello on May 9, 2013

Thanks for the list and the other contributions, the ones on here that I've seen are really good.

Except I'd remove Escape from LA, I'm a massive Carpenter fan but it really didn't add much.

Entdinglichung

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Entdinglichung on May 9, 2013

movies by the Burkinabian film director Idrissa Ouedraogo are supposed to be good, especially the earlier ones

flaneur

11 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by flaneur on May 9, 2013

jef costello

Thanks for the list and the other contributions, the ones on here that I've seen are really good.

Except I'd remove Escape from LA, I'm a massive Carpenter fan but it really didn't add much.

Kurt Russell does a high five whilst riding a surfboard and ends war forever. Best film.

Auld-bod

11 years 6 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Auld-bod on May 10, 2013

Spain
Jose Luis Cuerda – Butterfly’s Tongue (1999)
It’s Spain 1936, a young boy grows to like his teacher and develop a thirst for learning – however war is coming and with it fear and betrayal – very memorable.

Standfield

11 years 6 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Standfield on May 10, 2013

fleurnoire-et-rouge

There's a lot of really good movies here, plus loads that I haven't seen and I'll have to check out. There seems to me to be a huge omission though, someone who knew about growing up in extreme poverty - Charlie Chaplin. The Immigrant, The Kid, The Gold Rush, Modern Times. Not exactly the cutting edge of modern cinema and a bit sentimental if you have a cynical head on, but probably some of the most popular films ever with working class characters at the heart of the stories and the rich, the bosses, the police as the villains and the butt of the jokes.

My cinematic hero. I still think "The Dictator" is my favourite film, and I believe that it stands alongside "the cutting edge of modern cinema". It's beautifully simple, beautifully shot. And I adore the "fourth wall" current that runs through his films, most explicit in his speeches. So sincere.

An amazing scene with his son, "the anarchist kid", in "The King of New York" (1957):

http://vimeo.com/57874646

Auld-bod

11 years 6 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Auld-bod on May 11, 2013

Britain
Bill Douglas – My Childhood (1972)

The first part of a trilogy, the film was shot in black & white and echoes the director’s own early years – it’s Scotland in the 1940s and a boy lives in material and emotional poverty – set in a mining village, this is about as far from Hollywood cinema as you can get.

Shorty

11 years 6 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Shorty on May 15, 2013

Tony Manero - A man obsessed with the character from Saturday Night Fever is due to enter a television contest to crown the best Manero impersonator, whilst Pinochet's disappearances carry on in the background.

On the subject of Saturday Night Fever, there was this novara episode where they talked about Saturday Night Fever in terms of the refusal of work.

http://novaramedia.com/2012/07/the-refusal-of-work-post-fordist-subjectivity-and-beverly-hills-cop-2/

I didn't really get the Beverly Hills Cop bit, but ...

Auld-bod

11 years 6 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Auld-bod on May 15, 2013

Spain
Victor Erice – The Spirit of The Beehive (1973)

It’s rural Spain 1940 - seen mainly through the eyes of a seven year old girl – the adults behaviour is constricted with fear and memories of crushed dreams too painful to be voiced – the girl and her sister watch the 1931 classic movie ‘Frankenstein’ which ignites her imagination, and could lead her into danger.

Entdinglichung

11 years 6 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Entdinglichung on May 19, 2013

The Toxic Avenger (1984) ... the uprising of the subaltern (and their non-intentional vanguard) beats the corrupt establishment

[youtube]mg1_8IEvK5E[/youtube]

S. Artesian

11 years 6 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by S. Artesian on May 19, 2013

flaneur

Still have more to do on this, but has anyone female directed films to suggest?

Barbara Kopple, Harlan County USA

S. Artesian

11 years 6 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by S. Artesian on May 19, 2013

And, IMO, the best anti-Thatcher movie ever, Martin Stellman's For Queen and Country 1988

Entdinglichung

11 years 6 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Entdinglichung on May 21, 2013

to call a film by Fatih Akin "Turkish" (he was born in Hamburg, never lived in Turkey, most of his movies are set in Hamburg) is in a same way justified as calling movies by Mehdi Charef or Rachid Bouchareb's films "Algerian" or My Beautiful Laundrette a "Pakistani" film

good movies from Turkey, see e.g. Yılmaz Güney

and another good movie from a Kurdish film director living in Germany: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kleine_Freiheit

Auld-bod

11 years 6 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Auld-bod on May 21, 2013

I’ve only seen one of Yilmaz Guney’s films ‘Yol’.
He wrote the screenplay and instructions regarding how it should be directed, as he was in jail at the time. It was directed by his assistant Serik Goren.

Turkey
Yilmaz Guney/Serik Goren – Yol (1982)
Following the 1980 military takeover Turkey is depicted as an open prison with soldiers regulating everyday life. From a closed prison five inmates are paroled for a week – the film follows their separate journeys home and shows how medieval customs and religion are equally enslaving.

Struggles in Sweden

11 years 4 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Struggles in Sweden on July 14, 2013

Sweden

Bo Widerberg - Joe Hill (1971)
"About the life and death of the legendary Swedish/American agitator Joe Hill."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JoZUA-3F24g

Bo Widerberg - Ådalen '31 (1969)
"During a strike strike-breakers are being transported to Sandviken, where they are assaulted by the strikers. The military are sent in. On the 14th May 1931 there is a confrontation between demonstrators and the military who open fire and five people are killed and five injured."

Peter Birro - Upp till kamp (2008, mini series) (Take up the struggle)
4 episodes chronicling the coming of age of 4 different youths growing up in the Swedish working class port town of Gothenburg. A loving and authentic depiction of their involvement in the Vietnam solidarity movement and how important the idea of America was to all these youths in some way or another, how the K-groups (marxist-leninists) cynically tried to harness the wildcat strikes and youth resistance for party building, the tragedy of addiction and trying to rebuild life afterwards, the use of spies by the Social democrat party and the LO unions at hospitals in order to crack down on anyone threatening class peace, as well as the eventual 80's rise of the right wing and the personal conflicts and apathy following this development... a masterpiece!
Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJx82CoPYOI

Gabriela Pichler - Eat Sleep Die (2012)
[imho one of the most important depictions of Sweden of today as it tumbles even further down the OECD ratings, the plight of redudant and precariat youths, as well as both the solidarity and feeling that there's no future of small-town Sweden. Must see!]

Ever wondered who packs the fresh plastic-sealed salad you are having for lunch?
Who the people losing their factory jobs in dead end small towns would be? Ready for a visit to the "new" Sweden?
When the forceful young Muslim Swedish/Balkan "take-no-shit" factory worker Raša loses her job, she faces the system of unemployment.
With no high school diploma, no job – but her boots deeply stained with the mud of the small town she grew up in – Raša finds herself on collision course with society and it's contradictable values and expectations.
First time amateur actors play all of the main characters in the film.

Trailer. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ltvYgPfHIU

Göran Hugo Olsson - The Black Power Mixtape (2012)
The Black Power Mixtape is an award winning compilation feature documentary that displays the story of the African-American community 1967-1975, the people, the society and the style that fueled a change. Told with sparkling, beautiful and deep footage, lost in the archives in Sweden for 30 years.

Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lXQxyYllXnM

Lena Ewert och Lasse Westman - Kamrater: motståndaren är välorganisen (Comrades, our enemies are well-organized) (1972)
"In December 1969, a wildcat strike broke out in the iron ore fields in Norrbotten, the far north of Sweden. Despite the fact that it was a record year for Sweden and that the state-owned mining company LKAB made a profit, the working conditions of the miners became worse. The strike spread from Kiruna to Svappavaara and Malmberget and after
a few days, involved some 5,000 miners. Through NLF (National Liberation Front/Vietnam) and other local political groups, many people working in culture expressed solidarity with the miners and engaged themselves in their situation"

Multi-part youtube videos (no subs) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5FBQtRuIwo

Lasse Westman - 30 år har gått kamrat
The film-maker returns to a community in northern Sweden still split on the why the strike failed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1V21ObbGXs

Per Åhlin - Resan till melonia (1989)
The beautiful paradise island Melonia is inhabited by the wizard Prospero, his daughter Miranda and all their friends. The island is under threat from the industry island Plutonia, blackened by soot particles from coal particles and governed by two greedy managers who keeps small children as their slaves in the factories. Quite unique, and I remember seeing a TV interview with the director in his home; hanging behind him is a CNT-FAI-FIJL banner which was donated to the SUF in the 30's.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zSVQ21X6Vw

Roy Andersson - Songs from the Second Floor (2000)
"A man is standing in a subway car, his face dirty with soot. In his right hand he carries a plastic bag with documents, or rather, the charred leftovers of them. In a corridor a man is clinging desperately to the legs of the boss who just fired him. He is screaming: "I've been here for thirty years!" In a coffee shop someone is waiting for his father, who just burned his furniture company for insurance money. Traffic jams and self-flagellating stock brokers are filling up the streets while an economist, desperate for a solution to the problem of work becoming too expensive, gazes into the crystal ball of a scryer. Everything and everyone is going somewhere but their goal and its meaning have disappeared along the way."

Trailer - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9hYb6ggxoM

Pernilla August - Svinalängorna (2010)
A drama dealing with the destiny which many of the Finnish guest workers who came to Sweden to work in textile factories, mills and forestry during the 1960's and 70's, centered on a young woman's experiences growing up in a home riddled with abuse and alcoholism.
Trailer - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIvz3m0gpWc

Jan Troell - Everlasting Moments (2008)
"Based on the true story of Maria Larsson, a Swedish working class woman in the early 20th century, who wins a camera in a lottery and goes on to become a photographer. It has been compared to Troell's previous films Here's Your Life and As White as in Snow, which are both set around the same period."

altemark

11 years 4 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by altemark on July 28, 2013

Gabriela Pichler - Eat Sleep Die (2012) is a must-see!

freemind

11 years 3 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by freemind on August 24, 2013

Elephant is the most disgusting film about the troubles ever made.All we see are people with guns killing people with no narrative.We are led to believe the Irish are murderous psychopaths who wake up and kill each.other with no rationale or cause.The viewer can think nothing else and the film is a testament to ignorance and stupidity.
I fail to see how many of these films have any relovence to working class politics/ life.
I like Ken Loach but he is guilty of political cowardice in Land and Freedom for using Anarchist paraphernalia but not mentioning our politics once.However the POUM are given center stage.
The Devils Backbone is a good film on the Spanish Civil War and Loach's films like Kes and Rif Raff are excellent.

freemind

11 years 3 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by freemind on August 24, 2013

Riders of the Lost Dawn is as good as Libertarias in my opinion and was made 25 yrs ago but is online.Great series on the Spanish Revolution and an excellent drama too.

freemind

11 years 3 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by freemind on August 24, 2013

Riders of the Dawn 1990
Apologies for mistake comrades

flaneur

11 years 3 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by flaneur on August 24, 2013

freemind

Elephant is the most disgusting film about the troubles ever made.All we see are people with guns killing people

That obviously is the narrative. All the more so than 1989 when it was made when you think 3500 died so that Sinn Fein could sit in Stormont. The 'rationale' of it don't matter much to those killed in a shopping centre in Manchester or a nightclub in Derry.

Auld-bod

11 years 3 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Auld-bod on August 24, 2013

Freemind:
‘I like Ken Loach but he is guilty of political cowardice in Land and Freedom for using Anarchist paraphernalia but not mentioning our politics once.’

Think you’re being a bit tough on Loach's ‘Land and Freedom’ - I saw it as more about exposing the Stalinist counter-revolution. The film didn’t slander the anarchists and choosing the militia unit to be largely POUM rather than anarchist probably reflects something of Loach’s own politics.

Glad you mentioned ‘Riff Raff’ it is one of my favourite movies. The scene with Ricky Tomlinson in the bath is a classic - and what a great ending.

freemind

11 years 3 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by freemind on August 24, 2013

Flaneur
The rationale does matter because all victims who died in that war would I suspect want to know the reason and to rationalise is essential to bring closure.To relegate a conflict to a montage of shootings shows a disgustingly ignorant and crass attitude which at best is intellectually lazy and at worst a betrayal of all victims of the Troubles because it ignored the reasons the conflict existed therebye extending it.Also I suspect the conflict was about more than " 3500 died so Sinn Fein could sit in Stormont"

Auld-bod

11 years 3 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Auld-bod on August 24, 2013

I think this calls for a 'thread break' or whatever as I agree with Flaneur, though it is b***er all to do with cinema!

Chilli Sauce

11 years 2 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Chilli Sauce on September 15, 2013

Think you’re being a bit tough on Loach's ‘Land and Freedom’ - I saw it as more about exposing the Stalinist counter-revolution. The film didn’t slander the anarchists and choosing the militia unit to be largely POUM rather than anarchist probably reflects something of Loach’s own politics.

I always assumed it was because it basically followed the storyline of Homage to Catalonia.

Auld-bod

11 years 2 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Auld-bod on September 16, 2013

I watched ‘Tickets’ (2005) last week. It has three directors, Ermanno Olmi, Abbas Kiarostami & Ken Loach with the ‘action’ set on a train travelling from St. Moritz to Rome. The last section by Loach is terrific when three foul mouthed Glasgow Celtic supporters (match bound) become involved with a fugitive Albanian family. Well worth a watch.

Chilli Sauce

11 years 2 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Chilli Sauce on September 16, 2013

I watched The Machinist over the weekend. I don't know if if qualifies as working class just because the guy works in a factory (I mean, what's prolier than that?), but it is a damn good film and deals a bit with workplace accidents and dickhead bosses.

EDIT: I just noticed Brassed Off didn't make the list. Well worth a watch.

flaneur

11 years 2 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by flaneur on September 16, 2013

Forgot The Machinist. Would make a good double bill with The Working Class Goes to Heaven.

Chilli Sauce

11 years 2 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Chilli Sauce on September 16, 2013

Agreed, F.

Oh yeah, the other thing I was thinking was Barton Fink. Apparently the Coen brothers have mentioned that the labor conditions in Hollywood is one of the themes they wanted to explore in the film.

uburoi

11 years 1 month ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by uburoi on October 30, 2013

Chile
Gonzalo Justiniano
Caluga o menta (1990)
Niki and his friends are members of the marginalised underclass living on the outskirts of Santiago. During Chile's transition from dictatorship to democracy (1988-1990), they forge a path from drug- and drink-fuelled nihilism and petty crime into the world of market-driven illegality and Niki begins a seemingly predestined relationship with the middle-class "loca", Manuela. Memorable episodes and characters, quotable dialogue and a mix of earthy national portrait and surrealistic flourish make this one of the key Chilean films of the Nineties. (IMBD)

Haust

11 years ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Haust on November 13, 2013

Ermanno Olmi

Il Posto - A school leaver enters into the world of work whilst falling in love for the first time.

The actual title is Il Postino

wojtek

11 years ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by wojtek on November 28, 2013

Oslo, August 31st (2011)
"One day in the life of Anders, a young recovering drug addict, who takes a brief leave from his treatment center to interview for a job and catch up with old friends in Oslo."
http://www.putlocker.com/file/DC6E57224B5757EC#

http://www.blackbookmag.com/cinematic-panic-the-quiet-allure-of-joachim-trier-s-oslo-august-31st-1.58040?PQId=1.46682

Werner Harding

10 years 10 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Werner Harding on January 14, 2014

Monster- trials of a sex worker by female director (party Jenkins)
Addresses LGBT issues as well

Ikiru by Akira Kurosawa

Surprised Chaplin isn't mentioned here (at least I didn't see it) Modern Times is explicitly a working class film

Strozeck - werner herzog

Iskra

10 years 8 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Iskra on March 25, 2014

Why don't you have any Yugoslav movies?

Rani radovi (Early Works) by Želimir Žilnik (1969)
URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0064874/

Uloga moje porodice u svjetskoj revoluciji (Role of My Family in World Revolution) by Bahrudin Čengić (1971)
URL: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181096/

Just 2 that came to my mind right now.

Steven.

9 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Steven. on April 12, 2015

I'm just about to go through and update this with more additions, including lots of people's excellent suggestions.

I kind of want to add Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves to the list. Would anyone object to that?

Steven.

9 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Steven. on April 12, 2015

Thanks so much everyone for the recommendations. I've gone through and added them, as well as some more of my own. I thought it would be a quick job which I started this morning but it has actually taken me all day!

Mike Harman

9 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Mike Harman on April 12, 2015

Couple more Japanese films:

Red Lion / Akage (1969)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Lion_%28film%29

"Gonzo (Toshiro Mifune), a member of the Imperial Restoration Force, is being asked by the emperor to deliver official news to his home village of a New World Order. Wanting to pose as a military officer, he dons the Red Lion Mane of Office. Upon his return, his attempt to tell the village about a brand-new tax cut is quashed when the townfolk mistakenly assumes that he is there to rescue them from corrupt government officials. He learns that an evil magistrate has been swindling them for years. Now, he has to help the village, ward off Shogunate fanatics, along with the fact that he can't read his own proclamations."

Virgin Breaker Yuki (1976)

http://worldscinema.org/2012/10/yuuji-makiguchi-virgin-breaker-yuki-1976/ (trigger warnings for rape/torture)

"This film depicts prostitutes and anarchists in Kyoto just after the Peace Preservation Law was passed in 1925."

Steven.

9 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Steven. on April 12, 2015

Cheers Mike, could you edit those into the article?

I thought of some more after I finished but working on it today nearly made my eyes bleed.

Also it would be good if the years could be added to all of the films, as the somehow missing.

Here are the extra ones I thought of:
- The Act of Killing
- Battleship Potemkin
- Battle of Algiers

Agent of the I…

9 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Agent of the I… on April 13, 2015

This list is missing Snowpiercer.

IMDB.com: Set in a future where a failed climate-change experiment kills all life on the planet except for a lucky few who boarded the Snowpiercer, a train that travels around the globe, where a class system emerges.

Pennoid

9 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Pennoid on April 13, 2015

EDIT: Found it! It's called The Killing Floor (1985)

The Killing Floor is about an illiterate black sharecropper, Frank Custer, and his journey from the rural south to Chicago stockyards. The year is 1917 and the first World War is in full swing, leaving good paying jobs (21 cents an hour) for the men left behind, mostly immigrants and southern blacks.

The film portrays the pioneering attempt of Custer and other stockyard workers to bring together other blacks, Poles, Lithuanian, Irish and German workers to form an interracial union in the face of growing racial conflict in Chicago, the culmination of which eventually led to the Chicago Race Riot of 1919. The Killing Floor is based on actual characters and event and the tension expressed one of the great themes of American history: the conflict between class and race. It is explored with dignity, style and compassion. These were courageous men now remembered and revered, for it was not until the 1930’s that the vision of a strong interracial union was realized. A strong script and performances making The Killing Floor an honorable, rich and revealing film.

From here: http://history.sundance.org/films/1220/the_killing_floor

Auld-bod

9 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Auld-bod on April 13, 2015

Watched this a few weeks ago. Appears disjointed at first then…

Russia
Alexander Rogozhkin, The Cuckoo (Kukushka) (2002)

Set in WW2 on the northern border between Russia and Finland in the last days before the Finnish surrender. Two runaway soldiers a Russian and a Finnish sniper find refuge with a Lapp woman. Three different cultures and no common language make an excellent droll story.

Entdinglichung

9 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Entdinglichung on April 13, 2015

Antifa: Chasseurs de skins (France, 2008), a documentary by Marc-Aurèle Vecchione about the resistance against fascist skinheads in the Paris region during the 1980ies:

[youtube]EfDbTgb6uyc[/youtube]

Serge Forward

9 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Serge Forward on April 13, 2015

Steven.

I kind of want to add Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves to the list. Would anyone object to that?

You know, the 1950s British TV show, The Adventures of Robin Hood (starring Richard Greene), was largely written by exiled US writers who were blacklisted during the McCarthy witch-hunts. Apparently, some of the scripts reflected their leftism. I loved it as a kid but it's probably all very dated and dead cheesy now. Still, if you'd care to investigate, I think the entire series can be found on YouTube.

Uncle Wikipedia

Blacklisted writers

The Adventures of Robin Hood was produced by Hannah Weinstein, who had left-wing political views. Weinstein hired many blacklisted American writers to script episodes of the series: these included Ring Lardner Jr., Waldo Salt, Robert Lees, and Adrian Scott. Howard Koch, who was also blacklisted, served for a while as the series' script editor. The blacklisted writers were credited under pseudonyms, to avoid the attention of studio executives.[9]

(The sponsored prints of the first five episodes of series one, screened by CBS in the US on its first run, had no writer credits on their end title sequences, writers were only credited on sponsored prints from episode 6 onward, only later non-sponsored US re-run prints of series one have writer credits for these episodes, some of which differ from writer credits on UK prints. As an example, Lawrence McClellan is credited as writer of "The Coming of Robin Hood" on US prints, for the UK the pseudonym used is Eric Heath.)[10]

After the blacklist collapsed, Lardner said that the series' format allowed him "plenty of opportunities to comment on issues and institutions in Eisenhower-era America;" presumably A Tuck in Time was such an episode, in which a twin of Friar Tuck arrives boasting of his willingness to sell a weapon that could destroy the world. In addition to the redistributive themes of a hero who robs from the rich and gives to the poor, many episodes in the programme's first two seasons included the threat that Robin and his band would be betrayed to the authorities by friends or loved ones, much as the blacklisted writers had been.[9] But the half-hour length episodes and broad-target market precluded any political criticism that went beyond the generalities of 19th century Robin Hood revival books.

wojtek

9 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by wojtek on April 15, 2015

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/temp-temporal-film-review-660576
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLm09bN9HZY

Auld-bod

9 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Auld-bod on April 16, 2015

American
Michael Curtiz & William Keighley
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
Hungarian director with some American help, creates a classic film by which all others are measured.

Serge Forward

9 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Serge Forward on April 16, 2015

Loved that film as a kid. Pity the lead actor was a nazi though :o

Auld-bod

9 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Auld-bod on April 16, 2015

Didn't know he had any time for politics with his notorious reputation for booze and nymphets.
He did make some flag wavers during the war and tis said he won the war in Burma without the help of the British Indian Army or the Aussies.

Fleur

9 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Fleur on April 16, 2015

I know Errol Flynn was a rapist but there's some conflicting opinions about his politics. There was a book which claimed he was spying for the Nazis but there's also claims that he was spying for the allies. He did approach the OSS and offer to spy for them, because he was unfit for military service, using his connections in neutral Ireland. He did support Republican Spain during the Spanish Civil War and he rocked up in Cuba on his yacht to support the revolution there. Apparently his MI5 file is still classified.

Serge Forward

9 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Serge Forward on April 16, 2015

Ah... had a quick webmooch and the nazi spy allegation looks a bit tenuous. His lefty credentials are possibly less so. Hmm... confusing. Also, he may well have been a rapist but I think the charge was "statutory rape" (which as I vaguely understand this weird bit of US legalese, and knowing fuckall about the actual case, is not really the same thing). Still, definitely a flawed and somewhat unsavoury character.

Really love his films though.

Auld-bod

9 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Auld-bod on April 16, 2015

It is difficult to make him out. The usually reliable David Thomson in his ‘The New Biographical Dictionary of Film’ (2010) states:

‘In 1942, he was charged with raping two eighteen-year-old girls. The grand jury cleared him, but the authorities decided to prosecute anyway. Flynn was eventually acquitted, but only after the extent of his sexual appetite had been made clear.’ (Page 333)

In an age when the studios usually exerted themselves to protect their stars and the grand jury clearing him, why did the authorities still proceed? Hard to imagine they were taking a principled stand against a sexual predator. Had he offended someone?

Steven.

9 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Steven. on April 20, 2015

A few good additional suggestions here: http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2015/20-great-anarchist-movies-that-are-worth-your-time/2/

vicent

9 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by vicent on May 1, 2015

Iranian cinema has incredibly good working class cinema, due in part to low budgets and the only method directors can subtly critisise their rulers (and thereby win Oscars from the west)

Here are some goodies but there are hundreds

 .
Under the City's Skin (2001)
  
Tuba works daily at a grueling textile factory in Iran, returning home every night to deal with the rest of her problematic family

Turtles Can Fly (2004)
 
Near the Iraqi-Turkish border on the eve of an American invasion, refugee children like 13-year-old Kak (Ebrahim), gauge and await their fate

Baran (2001)
 
In a building site in present-day Tehran, Lateef, a 17-year-old Turkish worker is irresistibly drawn to Rahmat, a young Afghan worker. The revelation of Rahmat's secret changes both their lives.
The Color of Paradise (1999)

Mohammad, a boy at Tehran's institute for the blind, waits for his dad to pick him up for summer vacation

Children of Heaven (1997)
 
After a boy loses his sister's pair of shoes, he goes on a series of adventures in order to find them. When he can't, he tries a new way to "win" a new pair

vicent

9 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by vicent on May 1, 2015

A Time for Drunken Horses (2000)
  
Young Iranian Kurds (brothers and sisters) try to save the youngest of them, who is seriously ill.

Crimson Gold (2003)
  
An Iranian pizza delivery man sees the worst of corruption and social unbalance in his city and is driven to crime

Sadly most Iranians never watch these kinds of movies, preferring crappy Turkish soaps and western popcorn films, these movies are just western Oscar bait, but still very good

vicent

9 years 7 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by vicent on May 8, 2015

Chicken Run 2000

When a chicken farm amidst crisis switches from extracting the surplus value of their hens to using them as use value, the chickens rebel and attempt to escape the capitalist social relation

Steven.

9 years 6 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Steven. on May 14, 2015

Sweden, a film about shooting of strikers in 1931: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0065261/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1

vicent

9 years 6 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by vicent on May 22, 2015

where can one find these movies to torrent? particularly the more obscure ones, especially the swedish ones?

thanks

Entdinglichung

9 years 6 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Entdinglichung on May 27, 2015

Vicente Aranda, the director of the above-mentioned films Libertarias and Riders of the Dawn passed away today: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicente_Aranda

Cooked

9 years 6 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Cooked on May 27, 2015

vicent

where can one find these movies to torrent? particularly the more obscure ones, especially the swedish ones?

thanks

Almost all those swedish films are by mainstream or established swedish directors and are likely available at many torrent sites. Pirate bay has most of them. Didn't check seeders though.

Django

9 years 6 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Django on May 27, 2015

Belgium:

Two Days, One Night - The Dardenne Brothers

A factory worker recovering from a mental breakdown finds her colleagues have voted to lay her off and split her salary as a bonus. She spends a weekend canvassing them before a second, final vote.

Steven.

9 years 2 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Steven. on October 5, 2015

We should add most of these: http://www.avclub.com/article/a-working-class-hero-is-something-to-be-23-proleta-84426

As well as They Have Changed Their Face, Italian vampire movie

elraval2

9 years 2 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by elraval2 on October 5, 2015

Peter Watkins - Culloden.
Simply fantastic.

Mr. Jolly

8 years 9 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Mr. Jolly on February 24, 2016

Rita, Sue and Bob too has really got to be in there.

[youtube]7jbf477OqjI[/youtube]

Chilli Sauce

7 years 11 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Chilli Sauce on January 6, 2017

Saw High Rise quite recently. Really enjoyed it. Tells the story of dystopian class struggle in brutalist housing block in (pre-)Thatcherite England. Think Delicatessen meets Brazil.

Steven.

7 years 11 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Steven. on January 7, 2017

Chilli Sauce

Saw High Rise quite recently. Really enjoyed it. Tells the story of dystopian class struggle in brutalist housing block in (pre-)Thatcherite England. Think Delicatessen meets Brazil.

yeah, I really loved that film. Absolutely beautiful, and great use of music: the covers of Abba were amazing. I also love brutalist architecture, and live in a brutalist tower block so enjoyed it on that level as well.

Enjoyed the book as well, although wouldn't count either as "working class literature" as such. I thought the end of the film with the news story about Thatcher was pretty clunky and unnecessary, and isn't from the book at all.

Chilli Sauce

7 years 9 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by Chilli Sauce on February 21, 2017

Saw the Milagro Beanfield War recently.

It's not amazing - it has some really cardboard characters and I've heard the book is better - but it definitely has some class content. It centers on a mostly Latino town in the Southwest where a planned luxury development brings to the surface long-held resentment over water rights that have long-favored capital over the town's poor residents.

karnal m.

2 years 11 months ago

In reply to by libcom.org

Submitted by karnal m. on December 29, 2021

I guess India doesn't have a working class?... I would recomend "Salam Bombay"