Laborfest: Strike & Even The Heavens Weep

Strike (85 min. 1925) USSR
By Sergei Eisenstein

Strike is a powerful film on a locomotive factory strike in 1903 in Russia. A worker is blamed for a theft by the management and hangs himself. The conditions that workers faced under Czarist Russia are extremely oppressive, and this leads to workers organizing to fight back. The struggle for workers rights was met with brutal repression, and these conditions led to the Russian revolution. Eisenstein, who was the foremost film maker in Russia at that time, shows the role of not only the owner of the factory but also the police, the government and the military who are brought in to destroy the strike by firing on the strikers.

Today, as workers face harsher and harsher conditions and the government being used to support the bosses, while the times are different, the growing repressions against labor and working people has continuity.

Even The Heavens Weep: The Mine Wars of West Virginia (60 min. 1985) USA
By Danny L. McGuire
In 1920 in Matewan, West Virginia, a shootout took place between local coal miners and Baldwin-Felts were agents for the owners. Miners were seeking to join a union, and the ensuing battle following the shootout at Matewan was the battle at Blair Mountain. This mobilization of the miners became the largest rebellion since the American civil war, and also led to these miners joining the United Mine Workers of America UMWA. The shoot out is re-enacted annually in Matewan, West Virginia, and labor and community are seeking to preserve and save Blair mountain from environmental destruction.
Retired ILWU Local 10 longshoremen Howard Keylor will introduce the film.

See also:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001178/bio (Sergei Eisenstein)
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001178/ (Eisenstein films)
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001178/awards (Eisenstein awards)
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001178/otherworks (Eisenstein books)
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0570179/filmotype (McGuire films)
http://www.umwa.org/?q=content/matewan
http://www.laborfest.net/2013/2013Films.htm#f18
http://www.laborfest.net/2013/2013schedule.htm