International Workers Day Screening

Presented in partnership with Brown & Dickson Bookstore, we commemorate International Workers Day (May 1st) with a 16mm presentation of the landmark 1976 labour rights documentary, Union Maids, a collaborative film project recording the stories and recollections of three women involved in the struggle for worker's rights and the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations, a multi-racial labour union in 1930's America.

This significant historical work will be preceded by the rarely seen NFB short, The Working Class on Film (1975), which offers a glimpse of more than forty years of social-minded documentary from both the UK's GPO Film Unit and The National Film Board of Canada.

Program

THE WORKING CLASS ON FILM
Susan Schouten | 1975 | Canada | 14 minutes

This film, through excerpts taken from early British documentaries and National Film Board films, illustrates the origins of the documentary as visualized by John Grierson, filmmaker and social agitator, and it traces the development of the documentary over the past fifty years.
(NFB description)

UNION MAIDS
Julia Reichert, Jim Klein & Miles Mogulescu | 1976 | USA | 50 minutes

Sitdowns, scabs, goon squads, unemployment, hunger marches, red baiting and finally the energetic birth of the CIO: the 1930s were a landmark period for the American labor movement. UNION MAIDS is the story of three women who lived that history and make it come alive today. It was the first film of its kind-an oral history, using a wealth of footage from the National Archives to chronicle the fight to form industrial unions as seen through the eyes of rank and file women. The film was widely distributed in 16mm, including theatrical dates in about 20 cities.
(Kanopy description)