Wisconsin Rising at Reel Work Labor Film Festival

Wisconsin Rising documents the largest sustained workers’ resistance movement in American history. It tells the story of how Wisconsin became a testing ground for the nation in 2011. It was the canary in the coal mine as big money and power waited to see how far they could push people’s rights, in a political environment where corporations have greater and greater clout and ordinary citizens are losing their ability to obtain redress.


“Sam Mayfield’s Wisconsin Rising is up-close and personal…and political. This slice of life, a moment in movement history, captures the struggles of the American Middle Class confronting the corrupting power of money over democracy. Don’t miss it.”
— Amy Goodman
Host & Executive Producer of Democracy Now!

Wisconsin Rising Trailer
http://youtu.be/7nIV22Eqw04

The Reel Work May Day Labor Film Festival takes place in California’s central coast communities in and around Santa Cruz each year during the week of May First.

Reel Work presents cultural events, bringing together award-winning documentary film producers, workers, activists, students, and the public with the goal of increasing community awareness of the central role of work in our lives, to discuss economic and global justice issues, and to bring alive the history and culture of the labor movement in the US and abroad. We highlight how workers and community members band together in united effort for mutual benefit to achieve justice and dignity in the streets, fields, and workshops.

Cinematic representations of labor each year include local and international works, world premieres as well as classics. We inspire festival participants to join in the struggle for worker rights locally, nationally and globally to achieve social justice and international solidarity. And in the process we support filmmakers to produce the kind of film we want to screen.