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Labor Studies & Workers' Rights

38 Families (Newsreel #?)
San Francisco Newsreel
25 min., BW, US

All Our Sons: Fallen Heroes of 9/11
Lillian Benson
2003, 28 min., Color, US
Twelve African American firefighters were among the World Trade Center victims on September 11th, 2001. This moving documentary profiles these heroes, their families and the ultimate sacrifices they ...

The Art of Love and Struggle
Jessica Habie
2006, 78 min., Color, US
In this film, artists, singers, emcees, activists, poets and writers come together in an explosive exploration of feminine creation. Each lady brings to the screen her innermost struggles in an attemp...

Camp Arirang
Diana S. Lee & Grace Yoon-Kung Lee
1995, 29 min., BW, US/South Korea
A gritty look at the camp towns surrounding U.S. military bases in South Korea. This documentary follows Yon Ja Kim, a charismatic 50-year-old former sex worker through American Town, a government sub...

Los Cartoneros
Michael McLean
2006, 26 min., Color, US/Argentina
Juanchi, a 21-year-old from a small town outside Buenos Aires, supports himself and his family by digging through trash. Six days a week, he roams the street of the Argentine capital in search of card...

Children of the Cold War
Gonzalo Justiniano
1985, 75 min., Color, Chile
In his debut feature film, Justiniano presents a comic and critical tale that points to the apathetic complicity of Chile's middle class with the Pinochet dictatorship. The feature’s two mid-level off...

Chircales
Marta Rodríguez & Jorge Silva
1971, 42 min., BW, Colombia
This film portrays the life of a family of brick makers in the outskirts of Bogotá, Colombia, documenting the personal experience of the Castañeda family to expose the exploitation of manual laborers....

Claiming Our Voice
Jennifer Pritheeva Samuel
Producer: Jennifer Pritheeva Samuel & Chitra Aiyar
2013, 21 min., US
CLAIMING OUR VOICE follows members of Andolan, a Queens-based organization founded and led by South Asian domestic workers as a means to support each other and collectively organize against exploitati...

Community Control (Newsreel #24)
Newsreel
Producer: Newsreel
1969, 38 min., BW, US
This film documents one of the most important struggles for education in the sixties. In 1968, under intensive community pressure from Black and Latino communities, the State of New York chose three N...

Echando Raices
J.T. Takagi
Producer: The American Friends Service Committee/Rachel Kamel/Third World Newsreel
2002, 60 min., Color, US
Made in collaboration with local community groups, this three part documentary looks at the lives and struggles of a range of immigrant and refugee communities. In the Central Valley of California, m...

Floristas
Ruben Gonzalez
Producer: Third World Newsreel Workshop
1995, 18 min., Color, US
Floristas are immigrant flower vendors who scratch out a living by hawking their wares on the streets of New York City. Gonzalez depicts a world where survival depends on not only selling your wares,...

From Spikes to Spindles
Christine Choy
Producer: Third World Newsreel
1976, 46 min., Color, US
This raw, gutsy portrait of New York's Chinatown captures the early days of an emerging consciousness in the community. We see a Chinatown rarely depicted, a vibrant community whose young and old join...

Frozen Happiness: Impunity, Elections and Hope in Oaxaca
Tami Gold & Gerardo Renique
2012, 60 min., Color, US/Mexico
Video Reports from Oaxaca include two documentary shorts: Land, Rain & Fire and Frozen Happiness LAND, RAIN AND FIRE This short documentary tells the story of the police attack on more than fifty ...

Harvest of Empire: The Untold Story of Latinos in America
Eduardo López & Peter Getzels
Producer: Wendy Thompson-Marquez
2012, 90 min., Color, US
At a time of heated and divisive debate over immigration, HARVEST OF EMPIRE examines the direct connection between the long history of U.S. intervention in Latin America and the immigration crisis we ...

Human Traffic: Past and Present
Frances-Anne Solomon
2012, 34 min., Color, US
This eye-opening film documents the 2011 Conference on Human Trafficking and features the work of leading scholars, historians, lawyers, activists, and artists to generate a broad discussion of some o...

If You Could Walk In My Shoes
Ricardo E Causo
2016, 27 min., Color, US
Ecuadorian immigrant Roberto Marquez has been living in New York City for more than a decade, yet he has been unable to adjust his immigration status because there has been no path to citizenship for ...

In the Event Anyone Disappears
Allan Siegel
Producer: Third World Newsreel
1974, 25 min., Color, US
This documentary examines conditions faced by US prisoners in the early 70s, conditions that have remained virtually unchanged until today. Shot inside men's maximum-security prisons in Trenton and Ra...

Ina Mae Best
Charlene Gilbert
1993, 25 min., Color
A documentary portrait of a courageous African American woman, who after 18 years working at a textile factory in Goldsboro, North Carolina, became a passionate and outspoken leader in a struggle to u...

Jareena, Portrait of a Hijda
Prem Kalliat
1990, 25 min., Color, India
This video offers a profile of a transsexual and her community in the Indian city of Bangalore. It provides a unique insight into the lives of Hijdas, a society of eunuchs numbering in the tens of tho...

Judith: Portrait of a Street Vendor
Zahida Pirani
2014, 17 min., Color, US
JUDITH: PORTRAIT OF A STREET VENDOR is a documentary short that takes the audience on an intimate journey into the daily life of Judith, a street vendor from Guatemala who lives and works in New York ...

Land, Rain & Fire: Report from Oaxaca
Tami Gold & Gerardo Renique
Producer: Tami Gold & Gerardo Renique
2007, 30 min., Color, US/Mexico
What began as a teachers' strike for better wages and more resources for students has erupted into a massive movement for profound social change in the state of Oaxaca. With the largest indigenous pop...

Lessons from Class Struggle
Kathleen Foster
1998, 46 min., Color, US
"Schools are a disaster zone," declares the young narrator at the beginning of this documentary about public education in New York City during the Mayor Giuliani era (1994-2001). LESSONS FROM CLASS ST...

Maid to Stay
Aparna Talaulicar
1999, 30 min., Color, US
"Maid to Stay" is the story of four South Asian Women domestic workers in New York. Elizabeth has been sent back to India because her employers discover she's been talking to a women's group about ho...

Mi Nombre es Carlos
Paul Barrera
Producer: Third World Newsreel Workshop
2000, 13 min., Color, US
My Name is Carlos is an intimate portrait of an immigrant from Guatemala, who comes to New York City in search of the American dream. Still a window washer 30 years later, Carlos begins to have "visi...

Mississippi Triangle
Christine Choy, Worth Long, Allan Siegel
Producer: Third World Newsreel
1984, 78 min., Color, US
This is an intimate portrait of life in the Mississippi Delta, where Chinese, African Americans and whites live in a complex world of cotton, labor, and racial conflict. The history of the Chinese com...

Mississippi Triangle (110 minutes)
Christine Choy, Worth Long & Allan Siegel
Producer: Third World Newsreel
1984, 110 min., Color, US
This is an intimate portrait of life in the Mississippi Delta, where Chinese, African Americans and whites live in a complex world of cotton, labor, and racial conflict. The history of the Chinese com...

Mother
Jun seek TAE
2011, 102 min., Color, South Korea
MOTHER follows labor activist Lee So-seon, who for over 40 years organized for workers’ rights in South Korea. A courageous, yet humble woman, Lee’s activism began the day her son, iconic labor activi...

My Country Occupied (Newsreel #151)
Tami Gold & Heather Archibald
Producer: Newsreel
1971, 30 min., BW, US/Guatemala
In this moving film, the personal testimonies of Guatemalan Indians, peasants, and guerrillas are dramatized to provide the narration for a powerful overview of the history of U.S. destabilization of ...

Nailed It: Vietnamese & The Nail Industry
Adele Pham
2018, 59 min., Color, US
Visit any strip mall in the United States, and there’s bound to be a Vietnamese nail salon. While ubiquitous in cities across the country, few Americans know the history behind the salons and the 20 V...

Natives
Jesse Lerner
1999, 24 min., BW, US
At once ironic and disturbing, NATIVES documents the fears and jingoism of residents of San Diego county in their 'patriotic' attempts to exclude illegal Mexican immigrants....

Nazareth in August
Norman Cowie, Ahmed Damian & Dan Walworth
1986, 58 min., Color
Surrounded by settlements and the encroaching Jewish city of Nazareth Elite, the life of Nazareth's 55,000 Arabs remains a daily struggle. This documentary shows Palestinian Arabs living as Israeli ci...

Of Kites and Borders
Yolanda Pividal
2014, 60 min., Color, US/Mexico/Spain
OF KITES AND BORDERS, winner of the Best Documentary Award at the San Diego Film Festival and the Havana Film Festival in New York, tells the story of the daily struggle to be a child living on the US...

Promise and Unrest
Alan Grossman & Áine O’Brien
Producer: FOMACS in association with Ned Kelly Pictures
2010, 79 min., Color, Ireland
Through struggle and sacrifice migrant women often stand as sole breadwinners in the transnational family. Separated from her daughter Gracelle at 7 months, Noemi Barredo left the Philippines for work...

Resilience: Garment Workers
Betty Yu
2001, Color, US
Garment worker parents fight sweatshop conditions in New York City....

The Right to Vend
Naomi Abraham, Melissa Cox, Nseabasi Esema, Mtume Gant, Cynthia Wright, Henrietta Yuki
Producer: Third World Newsreel Workshop
2016, 10 min., Color
There are as many as 20,000 street vendors in New York City including hot dog vendors, flower vendors, t-shirt vendors, street artists, food trucks and many others. This short documents the inspiratio...

Salt Peanuts
Alonzo Speight & Simin Farkondeh
Producer: Third World Newsreel
2001, 6 min., Color, US
An ironic and engaging short on how worries of an impending economic downturn following the events of September 11th have caused corporations to cut their budgets. A Video blending documentary with n...

Salty Dog Blues
Al Santana & Denise B Santiago
2012, 52 min., Color/BW, US
SALTY DOG BLUES features a group of men and women of color who served in the United States Merchant Marine from 1937 – 1989. This nine-year project examines their development as a multi-racial and int...

Stand-By Generation, The
Juan Carlos Davila
2016, 20 min., Color, Puerto Rico
Shot in Puerto Rico, THE STAND-BY GENERATION explores the challenges of young workers seeking secure and stable jobs. The majority of the jobs offered to the new generation of workers in Puerto Rico a...

Straight For the Money: Interviews with Queer Sex Workers
Hima B.
1994, 59 min., Color, US
This documentary offers a unique perspective on sex work from the lesbian point of view. Through interviews, erotica, and archival footage, the videomaker explores the lives of lesbian strippers, pros...

Sweet Sugar Rage
Honor Ford-Smith & Harclyde Walcott
1985, 45 min., Color, Jamaica
A popular Jamaican women's troupe uses improvisation and theater as consciousness-raising tools for both rural and urban audiences. Their performances speak directly to the daily experiences of women-...

Talking Back
Renata Gangemi & Ruben Gonzalez
Producer: Third World Newsreel Workshop
1992, 17 min., Color, US
This documentary examines the lives and concerns of Latinas who are members of the service industry in the US. Video maker Gangemi weaves her own experiences as a domestic with those of other Latin A...

Taxi-vala/auto-biography
Vivek Renjen Bald
1996, 45 min., Color, US
This documentary focuses on the lives and dreams of South Asian immigrant taxi drivers in New York City. Combining video and taxi-driver interviews and the personal narrative of the second-generation...

Tinku Kamayu
Mabel Maio
2008, 30 min., Color, Argentina
This inspiring documentary tells the story of a group of Indigenous women who responded to Argentina's economic crisis by rediscovering the ancestral tradition of spinning and weaving wool. They call ...

Turmeric Border-Marks
Christina Choe
2000, 25 min., Color
TURMERIC BORDER-MARKS is an experimental documentary set in modern Seoul, Korea, where an intersection becomes two stories of migration, globalization, hybrid identity, cracked mirrors and turmeric (a...

Two Dollar Dance
Yolanda Pividal
2006, 17 min., Color, US
Every weekend, hundreds of Latino immigrants pack the dance clubs of Jackson Heights, in Queens, New York City. There, they meet the "two-dollars ballerinas", women who will be their dance floor partn...

Union a.k.a. Oil Strike a.k.a. Richmond Oil Strike (Newsreel #25)
San Francisco Newsreel
20 min., BW, US
January '69, oil workers in Northern California struck, and for the first time, students at San Francisco State and University of California were asked to join the union in the struggle. This action a...

Video Reports from Oaxaca
Tami Gold & Gerardo Renique
2012, 60 min., Color, US/Mexico
Video Reports from Oaxaca include two documentary shorts: Land, Rain & Fire and Frozen Happiness LAND, RAIN AND FIRE This short documentary tells the story of the police attack on more than fifty ...

Walking With FUREE
Miriam Perez
Producer: Third World Newsreel
2005, 10 min., Color, US
Post 9/11, Wanda Imasuen, a Harlem raised believer in the American Dream, found herself jobless and going to the welfare office. The humiliation of her treatment and the persistent efforts of the wom...

Will Be Televised
Shu Lea Cheang
1991, 300 min., Color
As video camcorders become more widely distributed in Asia, video makers have become active protagonists in the social and political changes taking place in the region. This series of tapes from five ...

Wilmington (Newsreel #30)
Newsreel
Producer: Newsreel
1970, 15 min., BW, US
This documentary is about a "company town." The DuPont family controls the state of Delaware as if it were a private kingdom through the giant DuPont Corporation. Their normal image as benevolent, p...

With Blood
Juliana Fredman & Dan O'Reilly-Rowe
2006, 57 min., Color, US/Palestine
This documentary follows ordinary people’s efforts to overcome extraordinary obstacles in pursuit of routine health care in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Shot on location with patients and health work...

The Woman's Film (Newsreel #55)
Newsreel
Producer: Women's Caucus--San Francisco Newsreel
1971, 40 min., BW, US
Produced collectively by women, this documentary is a valuable historical document of the origins of the modern women's movement in the United States. The film delves into the lives of ordinary women ...

The Women Outside: Korean Women and the U.S. Military
J.T. Takagi & Hye Jung Park
Producer: Third World Newsreel
1995, 60 min., Color, US/South Korea
Documenting the lives of women who work in the South Korean military brothels and clubs where over 27,000 women "service" the 37,000 American soldiers stationed in the most militarized region of the w...

Work and Respect
Domestic Workers United
Producer: Third World Newsreel
2010, 10 min., Color, US
Over 200,000 women work in the homes of New Yorkers as housekeepers and nannies. Mostly women of color and often undocumented, their work is not covered by labor laws, and for many, the pay and condit...

The Wreck of the New York Subways (Newsreel #47)
Newsreel
Producer: Newsreel
1969, 15 min., BW, US
During the winter of 1969, the New York Transit Authority increased the public transportation fee fare from 20 cents to 30 cents--a 50% increase. Infuriated riders scrambled under turnstiles and throu...


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TWN acknowledges that in New York we are on the unceded territory of the Lenni Lenape, Canarsie, Shinecock, and Munsee peoples and challenges the harm that continues to be inflicted upon Indigenous and People of Color communities here and abroad, which is why we all need to be part of the struggle for rights, equality and justice.

TWN is supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Color Congress, MOSAIC, New York Community Trust, Peace Development Fund, Ford Foundation, Golden Globe Foundation, Kolibri Foundation and individual donors.