Labor Studies

A rich historical record of Chicano art, life and culture since WWII, A Life in Print profiles influential artist and printmaker Xavier Viramontes, founding member of Galeria de la Raza, whose iconoclastic silkscreen poster for the United Farmworkers rallied a nation and sparked the Chicano movement in art.

The conversion of a state-owned munitions factory into luxury high-rise apartments allows for an acute appreciation of Socialism's impact on the Chinese people and the complex social changes transforming the country in this masterful new documentary from Jia Zhang-ke.

Don Quixote, Les Misérables, One Hundred Years of Solitude. The practice of reading classic works of literature to workers at cigar factories dates back to the mid-1800s. With a Stroke of the Chaveta explores this rich tradition that continues to flourish in Cuba.

How a small labor dispute at the Ravenswood Aluminum Plant in Ravenswood, West Virginia erupted into a national boycott and media campaign that changed the way unions deal with management.

Planted in Israel, harvested in Gaza, and exported to gourmet markets across Europe, the Gazan strawberry is the only product sold abroad as Palestinian produce. The amazing story of this little red fruit is a study in globalization and politics that offers a fresh perspective on the current Israeli-Palestinian crisis.

The journey of a young boy, hired to carry a red Coca-Cola fridge across the Himalayan Mountains, is an acute portrait of child labor in the developing world. This unusually beautiful and moving documentary is supported by the Global Fund for Children.

As small farms continue to disappear at an alarming rate, a growing number of women are venturing into this tradition-bound, male-dominated industry - and revitalizing it from within. Ladies of the Land explores the recent emergence of the woman farmer and its connection to the boom in organic agriculture.

In 2006, Evo Morales became the first indigenous president of Bolivia - winning the election with the largest majority in the country's history. Hailed as "outstanding" by the New York Times, Cocalero is a captivating portrait of this controversial figure and his astonishing rise to power.

Business Process Outsourcing is the fastest growing industry in the world. In India, over 350,000 people are currently working in call centers. Vikeeh Uppal, or "Ethan Reed," is one of them. You may have already spoken with him.

Her opponents gave her the "Bullshit Award" for sustaining global poverty. Time magazine hailed her as one of the great heroes of our time. She is Vandana Shiva and this is a film about globalization, genetic engineering, bio-piracy, food and water.

Selected by Time Magazine as one of the ten top films of 2004, Per Fly’s The Inheritance is a powerful and timely drama about a man torn between family and business.

Welcome to Alang , India, the site of a gargantuan scrap yard where oceangoing ships come to die. Forty thousand Indians live and work here, dismembering and scavenging the hulks of 400 vessels every year.

This poignant and inspiring documentary tells the story of Coopa-Roca, a cooperative of seamstresses in a shantytown in Rio de Janeiro who, in an effort to provide an income for their families, design and manufacture women’s clothing and accessories.

New and revised. This documentary examines the current controversy over the issue of slave reparations, addressing the most often voiced objections ("It’s long over," "I had nothing to do with it," "Affirmative Action is enough," etc.) to the claim for financial restitution to the ancestors of slaves for the wealth created by black labor in previous centuries.

Shows how the Innovators Movement of the Sandinista Workers Union fabricated machine parts and other items to maintain the Nicaraguan economy during the U.S. economic blockade.

Examines the history of one of Mexico's most combative unions, from the 1920s through the present day, through archival footage and interviews with surviving participants.

In the early Sixties, the Brazilian peasant leader, João Pedro Teixeira, was assasinated by two gunmen hired by local landowners. Teixeira's story was being filmed as a docu-drama when the 1964 military coup prevented the completion of the film. The entire crew was imprisoned and their equipment confiscated. Twenty years later, in a more democratic Brazil, director Eduardo Coutinho recovered his confiscated film and located the murdered peasant's widow and children. Coutinho's interviews with her and other families are interwoven with sequences from the original docu-drama to produce an unusually provocative historical film.

This video documents the struggles of peasants in the Landless Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil, which is engaged in a national political campaign to occupy and cultivate unused land.

In 1959, some 800 families resisted efforts to remove them from their remote farms. One peasant leader, Jofre Correa Netto, became known as the “Fidel Castro of Brazil,” and became the target of an assassination attempt.

This ten-part series on nineteenth and twentieth-century American history uses period graphics and innovative computer animation to make history accessible and exciting for high school, college and adult education students.