Co-Sponsored by Workmen's Circle, this evening is the start of an ongoing film going celebration of the last bastion of middle-income working people's housing in Manhattan. Penn South, also know as Mutual Redevelopment Houses, was founded by a labor union, the ILGWU, for its workers in the nearby garment district. The Kennedy Administration as well as the United Housing Federation were partners in the development. As Manhattan turns into a luxury priced playground for the global 1%, it is important to remember that not long ago, the idea that workers should be able to live near their jobs, so as not to be forced to travel hours a day to work, was considered a reasonable and worthwhile concern of society. Let's make that so in the future as well.
6:30: Story of America: From Bloody Sunday to Moral Mondays (30 min-2015) An excerpt from a work in progress that tries to show how that when opposite sides on America really talk to each other, rather than yell and shout, something amazing is actually possible.
Get By (28 min - 2015) looks at two recycling workers, Stanley and Milton, as they bring their struggle for a living wage to the legislature, media, and the streets of Ithaca, New York. An exploration of worker-community solidarity and urban democracy, the film raises key questions about the value of increasingly privatized work, and the challenges of organizing across divides of race and class;
Daughter of a Lesser God (11 min -2014) powerful shorts from an amazing young Pakistani director, about young women workers and textile workers organizing to fight back against brutal working conditions and slave labor wages.
With Banners Held High ( 31 min-2014) celebrates the resilience and humor of miners and women who went through the 1984/5 Miners’ Strike. The year long strike was one of the most defining industrial actions in recent history. Personal interviews with ordinary people from the Strike and the use of music, photographs, and archive material, make for an insightful, moving film that brings the experience of the Strike into perspective 30 years on.