Spotlight
Wondering which films to watch? Spotlight presents thematically grouped, must see films, hand-picked by Fandor's curators.
A Day in the Life of a Coalminer
Liverpool
Executive Koala
A Hell of a Note
Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price
Last Train Home
Workers Leaving the Factory
Blind Shaft
These Hands
Workers Leaving the Factory (Dubai)
Clockwork
Leviathan
Take Out
Master Hands
The Phantom of the Operator
The Cry of the Children
The Business of America
Workers Unite!
The end of summer, the last day to wear white and the beginning of football season. A day to barbecue, go shopping or watch cars race in circles. What's missing here? A holiday occasioned to celebrate the advances made by workers, on this Labor Day we're doing exactly that by assembling a collection of films and docs focused on the achievements of the labor movement, as well as the struggles that remain here and abroad.
Selected Films
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Workers Leaving the Factory
WORKERS LEAVING THE FACTORY, arguably the most important film ever made, was the first film shown at Auguste and Louis Lumière's premiere screening on December 28, 1895, at Le Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris (the first film screening in history). Three alternate takes (and...Watch Movie
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Workers Leaving the Factory (Dubai)
115 years later, a(nother) remake of the Lumière Brothers pseudo-actuality film LA SORTIE DES USINES LUMIÈRE. This time around our factory is a job site, a construction site peopled by thousands of Southeast Asian laborers, a neo-Fordist architectural production site that...Watch Movie
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A Day in the Life of a Coalminer
A DAY IN THE LIFE OF A COALMINER is a bit of a misnomer as this short from the Kineto Production Company (which specialized in actualities and educational films) economically assays a day in the life of a coal mine. Bookended by a coalminer leaving his cottage for work and a...Watch Movie
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Last Train Home
Every spring, China's cities are plunged into chaos as 130 million migrant workers journey to their home villages for the New Year's holiday. This mass exodus is the world's largest human migration, an epic spectacle that reveals a country tragically caught between its rural past and industrial...Watch Movie
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Leviathan
One of the most critically-acclaimed documentaries in recent years, LEVIATHAN is a groundbreaking, immersive portrait of the contemporary commercial fishing industry. Filmed off the coast of New Bedford, Massachusetts (at one time the whaling capital of the world as well as Herman Melville's...Watch Movie
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The Phantom of the Operator
This wry and delightful documentary reveals a little-known chapter in labor history: the story of female telephone operators' central place in the development of global communications. With an eye for the quirky and humorous, Caroline Martel assembles a dazzling array of clips...Watch Movie
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The Cry of the Children
THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN is the most famous and best documented of all Thanhouser films. In its day it was recognized as one of the most important expressions of the pre-World War One reform movement, in particular child labor. Perhaps because the uncompromising content drew...Watch Movie
