Labor Goes to the Movies

The Labor Goes to the Movies Committee plans and organizes the PSC’s long-running film series , which screens films about unions or social movements. As a committee, we select the films, usually after spirited discussion, and arrange for a speaker with expertise in the film’s subject to lead discussion. The committee is open to all, and includes film studies faculty as well as members who just love movies. We meet during the spring and summer to choose the following year’s films and stay in touch by attending the screenings each month. Now in its eleventh season, the series often has a theme for the year; this year’s is "Lessons."

In a time of persistent calls for “reform” of education, this year’s series looks at films that examine the idea of learning, whether in the classroom or not. Slashing funds for education and vilifying teacher unions may suggest that elites indeed recognize the danger of education. Many of the films in the series demonstrate the individual and collective power that learning can have, while some question the repressive power that the institution can also impose/acquire. What lessons can the films teach us?

Click here for PDF of a poster with a full calendar of LGTM screenings.

Recent Committee Posts

  • Labor Goes to the Movies, "The Organizer"

    Labor Goes to the Movies is proud to present The Organizer, April 20th, at 6pm.

    Friday, April 20, 2012
    6pm
    PSC Union Hall
    61 Broadway, 16th Floor
    $2 donation
    Refreshments served

  • No One Can Predict The Moment Of Revolution: Films from Occupy Wall Street (So Far)

    No One Can Predict The Moment Of Revolution: Films from Occupy Wall Street (So Far)

    On the eve of the three month anniversary of OWS, over 75 filmmakers, activists, educators and union short documentaries that covered the first three months of the #Occupy movement.

  • Labor Goes to the Movies Special Saturday Screening-Charter Schools and the Corporate Makeover of Public Education

    Join us for our special back-to-back Saturday screening/discussion on January 21 of Waiting For Superman and The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman.

    One has received massive publicity and funding to promote charter schools as part of a neoliberal reform. The second one is a local NYC response, made by NYC schoolteachers, exposing the inaccuracy and inequity driving the charter school movement. We will view both films and have a discussion featuring Julie Cavanagh, one of the Inconvenient Truth producers, and PSC's Treasurer and author on the charter school movement, Mike Fabricant.

    The screening is sponsored by the PSC and is open to the public.
    PSC Union Hall
    61 Broadway, 16th Floor
    $2 donation
    Refreshments served

  • Labor Goes to the Movies, "My Beautiful Laundrette"

    Labor Goes to the Movies -- My Beautiful Laundrette (Stephen Frears, UK, 1985) Friday, May 13, 6 pm, PSC Union Hall, 16th Floor, 61 Broadway

    Originally made for Channel 4 in England, the film dramatizes class, race and gender border-crossing in Thatcher England.

  • Labor Goes to Movies, "Caché"

    Labor Goes to the Movies -- Caché (Michael Haneke, /France, 2006) Friday, April 8, 6 pm, PSC Union Hall, 16th Floor, 61 Broadway

    Haneke mercilessly examines and explodes the surface of European bourgeois culture in this fim for which he won Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival.

  • Labor Goes to the Movies, "Bled Number One"

    Labor Goes to the Movies -- Bled Number One (Rabah Ameur-Zaimeche, Algeria/France, 2006) Friday, March. 11, 6 pm, PSC Union Hall, 16th Floor, 61 Broadway

    An Algerian deported from France for unknown reasons returns to his family village in Algeria. As both a native and a foreigner, he observes the people and customs of his first bled (home)—Number One.

  • Labor Goes to the Movies, "La Cienaga"

    Labor Goes to the Movies -- La Cienaga (Lucrecia Martel, Argentina, 2001) Friday, Feb. 18, 6 pm, PSC Union Hall, 16th Floor, 61 Broadway

    The first film by Martel (director of last year’s Headless Woman) presents a withering portrait of a bourgeois family literally and figuratively rotting away in its country home, not far from the Bolivian border.

  • Labor Goes to the Movies Special Event, "Red Riding Trilogy"

    Labor Goes to the Movies -- Red Riding Trilogy (Julian Jarrold, James Marsh and Anand Tucker, UK, 2009), Saturday, January 22nd, Noon, PSC Union Hall, 16th Floor, 61 Broadway

Member Info

Chair

Jonathan Buchsbaum

Members

Giovanni Marinelli
Jerry Carlson
Glenn Kissack
Robert Singer
Sharon Persinger
Carolyn Strachan

View full member info
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