’09 DC LABOR FILMFEST KICKS OFF NEXT TUESDAY!

This year’s DC Labor FilmFest features 30 screenings of 19 films over seven days, offering a unique line-up of films about work and workers. The 9th annual FilmFest is set for October 13 - 19 and boasts an exciting array of new films and beloved classics about work and workers, from the American office to the far-flung factories of the global economy. More than two dozen films will screen at nine different venues - including main FilmFest home AFI, 8633 Colesville Rd, Silver Spring, MD 20910 - around Washington at the popular film festival.

Featured screenings include a special 10th anniversary showing of OFFICE SPACE with actors Stephen Root (Milton) and Gary Cole (Lumbergh) plus the Swingline red stapler raffle. THE PHILOSOPHER KINGS explores the lives of janitors as a way of investigating the difference between having an education and possessing knowledge, and will be attended by director Patrick Shen. Director Jennifer Baichwal will screen MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES, her mesmerizing documentary on the work of artist Edward Burtynsky - who will also appear - internationally acclaimed for his large-scale photographs of “manufactured landscapes” - quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines and dams - which create stunningly beautiful art from civilization’s materials and debris. Once again, there will be multiple free noontime screenings downtown, this year of WORKING LUNCH, a collection of six short and very amusing films about labor. A closing-night screening of BOUND FOR GLORY will be followed by a free Woody Guthrie concert at McGinty’s Pub by the U-Liners.

Tickets are going fast, so click here to order yours now and guarantee your seat! See below for a quick overview or click here for the full schedule and ticket info.

ADVENTURES IN POWER
"An epic comedy about a mine-worker named Power whose love of drums and lack of musical skill has turned him into the ridiculed 'air drummer' of his small town. But when Power's union-leader father calls a strike at the mine, Power discovers an underground subculture of air-drummers who just might hold the key to changing the world.
Directed by Ari Gold, 2009, U.S. 89m, comedy
Click here for more info.
Sunday, October 18, 6p, Busboys & Poets; FREE

AT HOME IN UTOPIA
A home of one’s own: that’s the American dream. But what happens when the dreamers are immigrants, factory workers and Communists? In the mid-1920s, thousands of Jewish immigrant garment workers managed to catapult themselves out of urban slums and ghettos by pooling their resources and building four cooperatively owned and run apartment complexes in the Bronx.
Directed by Michal Goldman, 2008, US, 57m, doc
Wednesday, October 14, 7:30, DC JCC
Co-sponsored with the 20th Washington Jewish Film Festival (December 3-13, 2009)

BLUE COLLAR
Paul Schrader’s (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull) first film stars Richard Pryor, Harvey Keitel and Yaphet Kotto as auto workers who accidentally uncover corruption in their union local.
Directed by Paul Schrader, 1978, U.S., 114m, drama
Thursday, October 15, 9:30P, AFI
Friday, October 16, 7P, AFI

BOUND FOR GLORY
David Carradine stars as legendary American folksinger Woody Guthrie, who said "I hate a s ong that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing...I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work."
Directed by Hal Ashby, 1976, U.S. 147m, biography/drama/music
Sunday, October 18, 1P, AFI
Monday, October 19, 6:30P, AFI; followed by free concert of Woody Guthrie music by The U-Liners at 9:15p at McGinty’s! Free with a can of food.

THE FIGHT IN THE FIELDS
Cesar Chavez and the Farmworkers' Struggle
Tells the story of Cesar Chavez, the charismatic founder of the United Farmworkers Union, and the movement that he inspired.
Produced, directed, and written by Rick Tejada-Flores and Ray Telles, 1996, U.S. 116m
Thursday, October 15, 12 noon, DOL; FREE
Co-sponsored by AFGE Local 12
Click here for more info.

FROZEN RIVER
Bravura performances and a ripped-from-the-headlines plot make this a must-see. When her husband takes off with the down payment on their double-wide trailer just days before Christmas, (Ray Eddy) is drawn into the shadowy world of smuggling across a little-known border crossing on the Mohawk reservation between New York State and Quebec.
Directed by Courtney Hunt, 2008, US, 97m, drama
Tuesday, October 13, 9:45P, AFI
Wednesday, October 14, 9:20P, AFI

THE GRAPES OF WRATH
John Ford’s Academy Award-winning film brilliantly brings John Steinbeck’s Depression classic to the screen. Forced from their homestead by economic forces beyond their c ontrol, Tom Joad (Henry Fonda) and his family migrate west to the promised land of California, their rickety truck piled high with belongings in a desperate trek that’s become all too familiar to families and workers around the world.
Directed by John Ford, 1940, US, 128m, drama
Thursday, October 15, 7P, AFI
Sunday, October 18, 4P, AFI

HEROES FOR SALE
One of the most thrilling pre-code melodramas, Heroes for Sale follows working class hero Richard Barthelmess as he survives serious injury in WWI, overcomes a morphine addiction, faces unemployment, finds love (with Loretta Young) and a steady job, and tries to stop a vicious strike mob…and that’s just in the first half!
Directed by William Wellman, US 1933, 73m, drama
Wednesday, October 14, 6:30, AFI (Recession Special: Depression Era Double Feature! $7 admission includes showing of Wild Boys of the Road)

THE INSIDER
Gripping drama tells the true story of Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe) a former tobacco executive who comes under personal and professional attack when he decides to appear in a "60 Minutes" expose on Big Tobacco. Also stars Al Pacino stars as producer Lowell Bergman and Christopher Plummer as Mike Wallace.
US, drama, 1999; 157m; directed by Michael Mann
Speaker: Dr. Jeffrey Wigand. Presented by the Union of Concerned Scientists
Thursday, October 22, 6:30 Location TBA; FREE
Click here to view the movie trailer.

MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES (with director
Jennifer Baichwal & photographer Edward Burtynsky)
Documentary on t he world and work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky. Internationally acclaimed for his large-scale photographs of “manufactured landscapes” - quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines and dams—Burtynsky creates stunningly beautiful art from civilization’s materials and debris. The film follows him through China, as he shoots the evidence and effects of that country’s massive industrial revolution.
Directed by Jennifer Baichwal, 2006, Canada, 90m, doc
Tuesday, October 13, 7p, AFI
Click here for more info.

THE MOST DANGEROUS MAN IN AMERICA:
DANIEL ELLSBERG AND THE PENTAGON PAPERS
Henry Kissinger called Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, "the most dangerous man in America." Three decades later, Ellsberg’s still at it. This documentary tells a story we need now.
US, doc, 2009; Produced and directed by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith
Click here for more info.
Presented by the DC Environmental Film Festival and The Impact Arts + Film Fund and The Project On Government Oversight
Thursday, October 29, 6:30p; Capitol Visitor’s Center, US Capitol East front at First Street and East Capitol Street, NE; FREE 

NEVER TURNING BACK:
THE WORLD OF PEGGY LIPSHUTZ
The story of one woman’s unwavering commitment to art, peace, justice and social change.
Directed by Jerri Zbiral, 2008, US, 20m
Wednesday, October 14, 12 noon, AFL-CIO; FREE

OFFICE SPACE (10th anniversary!) WITH MILTON (Steven Root),
LUMBERG (Gary Cole) RED SWINGLINE STAPLER RAFFLE & Quote Contest!
“I could burn this pla ce down.” “We need to talk about your TPS reports.” “It's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.” “Why does it say paper jam when there is no paper jam?” A perennial DC Labor FilmFest favorite, the outrageously funny OFFICE SPACE returns for a 10th anniversary screening.
Directed by Mike Judge; 1999, US, 89m, comedy
Saturday, October 17, 7:45P, AFI

THE PHILOSOPHER KINGS
A documentary about working people that “leaves us feeling optimistic and even renewed,” THE PHILOSOPHER KINGS explores the lives of janitors as a way of investigating the difference between having an education and possessing knowledge.
Directed by Patrick Shen, 2009, US, 70m, doc
Thursday, October 15, 12 noon, SEIU; FREE
Thursday, October 15, 8P, Georgetown ICC; FREE

SILKWOOD
Dramatic film is based on the true story of Karen Silkwood (Meryl Streep), a rank-and-file worker at a plutonium factory, who was accidentally exposed to a lethal dose of radiation. 
US, drama, 1983; 131m; directed by Mike Nichols
Speakers: Howard Kohn, author "Who Killed Karen Silkwood" & David Burnham, former New York Times reporter
Thursday, October 15, 6:30p, location TBA; FREE
Presented by the National Whistleblowers Center
Click here to view the movie trailer.

SITUATIONS VACANT
Dave Bracken wants to get the right job, meet the right girl. He just needs to figure out the right lies…An utterly charming romantic comedy about young workers trying to find a job in Dublin, Ireland.
Directed by Lisa Mulcahy, 2008, Ireland, 97m, romantic comedy
Friday, October 16, 5p, AFI
Sunday, October 18, 6:30P, AFI

SLAP SHOT
Paul Newman is casually brilliant as an aging player-coach for the Charlestown Chiefs, a third-rate professional hockey team in a dying New England mill town that just lost 10,000 mill j obs. “One of the funniest ever made about any sport.”
Directed by George Roy Hill, 1977, US, 123m; comedy
Friday, October 16, 9:30p, AFI
Saturday, October 17, 10:30p, AFI

TOKYO SONATA
Abruptly laid off from his white-collar job, Ryuhei (Teruyuki Kagawa) hides his unemployment from his family and spends his days with other out-of-work men before reluctantly accepting menial work scrubbing toilets in a mall.
Directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2008, Japan, 119m, Japanese with subtitles, drama
Saturday, October 17, 5p, AFI
Monday, October 19, 9:20p, AFI

THE WHISTLEBLOWER (Just Added!)
Portrait of Charles Hamel, the management consultant who blew the whistle on big oil in Alaska and found himself the target of a major undercover sting that threatened the lives of Hamel's whistleblowers in Alaska and even targeted a senior Congressman.
Directed and Produced by Nonny De La Peña, 2004, U.S. 50 minutes, documentary
Thursday, October 8: 6:30P at the Capitol Visitor's Center, entrance on the East Front of the United States Capitol. FREE admission; open to all.
Presented by Public Citizen

WILD BOYS OF THE ROAD
A cinematic assault on America's lack of response to the Great Depression, Wild Boys lays the blame squarely on corrupt officials and a government that does the bidding of the rich. One of the more successful New Deal morality tales put out by Warner Bros. in the early 1930s, the film uses hard-hitting documentary-style footage filmed on location.
Directed by William Wellman, 1933, U.S., 68m, classic drama
Wednesday, October 14, 6:30P, AFI

WORKING LUNCH
6 Short Films About Labor
(total running time: 32 minutes)
Whether using humor, music, animation or silent words, these brief films from around the world all entertainingly provide food for thought.