The following are documentaries on women's work and labor activism that can be viewed at
Bobst Library's Avery Fisher Center on the 3rd floor. Many offer rich visual counterparts to
published scholarship in Tamiment's collections. Others, such as an historical biography of an
Inuit woman reindeer herder, offer rather unique views of women's work.
Please note that, in addition to titles here, there are many more video biographies available at Avery Fisher of individual women whose cultural labor has distinguished them in various fields: well-known dancers, musicians, writers, visual artists, and actresses, such as Billie Holiday, Isadora Duncan, Lillian Gish, Faith Ringgold, and Dorothea Lange. Avery Fisher also has some of Hollywood's various portrayals of women's work and activism, such as Norma Rae and Silkwood. Please check BobCat for titles.
AFisher / VCA 6241 Diana Kilmury, Teamster. By Laszlo Barna. [In processing as of 11/20/00 — check BobCat for further information.]
AFisher / VCA 2931 Elizabeth Gurley Flynn: The Rebel Girl. Produced and directed by Leah Siegel. New York: New York University, 1993. One videocassette (ca. 20 min.): sd., col. with b&w sequences. Life of one of America's best-known radicals and female leaders of labor and the left. See also see her collected papers under Archival Manuscript Collections.
AFisher / VCA 574 EEOC Story: A Look at the Work of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Produced, written and directed by William Greaves, for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. New York: Your World Video [distributor], 1974. One videocassette (38 min.): sd., col. Examines the workings of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and explains how it serves women and minorities. Includes interviews with a number of the Commission's key officials and dramatizations of typical violations.
AFisher / VCA 387 The Emerging Woman. By Roberta Haber, Lorraine Gray, Melanie Moholick, Helena Solberg-Ladd; a Women's Film Project production. New York: Women's Film Project; Cinema Guild [distributor], 1974. One videocassette (40 min.): sd., b&w. An overview history of the varied economic, social, and cultural experiences of white and black women in the United States since the early 19th century. Uses old engravings, photographs, newsreels, film clips and interviews to show women's struggles for equal rights in education, employment, and politics, and before the law.
AFisher / VCA 6122 Fast Food Women. By Anne Lewis Johnson; [produced by] Headwaters. Whitesburg, KY: Appalshop Film & Video, 1991. One videocassette (29 min.): sd., col. A documentary on the predominantly middle-aged, female staff of a fast food restaurant in an Appalachian mining community. Explores how women feel about their jobs and how their long- term work in support of their families (often including unemployed miner husbands) belies stereotypes of fast food jobs as temporary work for teens seeking "sneaker money."
AFisher / VCA 415 Free Voice of Labor—The Jewish Anarchists. Produced/directed by Steven Fischler and Joel Sucher. New York: Pacific Street Films; Cinema Guild [distributor], 1980. One videocassette (55 min.): sd., col. Winner of a Blue Ribbon at the American Film Festival. An historical portrait of Jewish anarchists as disillusioned immigrants who helped organized the sweatshops of the New York City garment industry.
AFisher / VCA 2179 Freedom Bags. Abena Productions; produced by Stanley Nelson and Elizabeth Clark-Lewis; directed by Stanley Nelson. New York: Filmakers Library, 1990. One videocassette (32 min.): sd., col. with b&w sequences. History of African-American women who worked as domestics from the end of the Civil War through the early twentieth century. Features interviews with domestic workers, and focuses in particular on their strategies for resisting employers' exploitation. Based on research used in Clark-Lewis's oral history-driven Living In, Living Out: African American Domestics in Washington, DC, 1910-1940 (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1994).
AFisher / VCA 70 Harlan County U.S.A. Cabin Creek Films. New York: Columbia Pictures Home Entertainment, 1980. One videocassette (103 min.): sd., color. An academy award- winning history of the United Mine Workers of America strike in 1973 against the Duke Power Company in Harlan County, Kentucky, in which the participation of predominantly male workers' wives profoundly affects the course of the labor conflict. Made by Barbara Koppel, auteur of the well-known, award-winning film American Dream on the Hormel strike of 1985.
AFisher / VCA 5046 Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl. An American Social History Production. Directed by Pennee Bender, Joshua Brown, Andrea Ades V'asquez; producer/art director/script, Joshua Brown. Ho-Ho-Kus, NJ: American Social History Film Library, 1993. One videocassette (28 min.): sd., b&w with color sequences. Photographs, films, interviews, memoirs, newspapers, and other sources show the life of immigrant shirtwaist makers in New York City during the first decade of the twentieth century and their strike movement.
AFisher / VCA 3011 High Heels and Ground Glass: Pioneering Women Photographers. June 29th Productions; written and produced by Deborah Irmas and Barbara Kasten. New York: Filmakers Library, 1990. One videocassette (29 min.): sd., col. and b&w. Life stories and work of five outstanding women photographers born around the turn of the century who broke new ground in the "male" craft. Their work and experiences are placed in historical context of what being a professional meant for women in the mid-twentieth century.
AFisher / VCA 297 The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter. Produced and directed by Connie
Field. Los Angeles: Direct Cinema, 1980. One videocassette (65 min.): sd., col. History
of wartime women workers, shown through experiences of five women interviewees who
abandoned domestic labor, farm work, and homemaking for lucrative "male" industrial jobs
during the war and then faced pink slips and cultural pressures to relinquish their factory
positions to returning GIs. (See also companion volume of same title, under Scholarship on Women and Labor.)
AFisher / VCA 3008 The Reindeer Queen: The Story of Sinrock Mary. New York: Filmakers Library, 1991. One videocassette (ca. 28 min.): sd., col. with b&w sequences. Granddaughters of Sinrock Mary talk about her life in the late 19th and early 20th century as an Inuit reindeer herder in Alaska.
AFisher / VCA 637 Salt of the Earth. Los Angeles, Calif.: Voyager Press, 1985[?], ©1953. By Michael Wilson; Independent Productions Corporations and the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers. One videocassette (94 min.): sd., b&w. Semi-documentary portraying a bitter year-long strike of Mexican-American zinc miners in New Mexico and emphasizing women's participation. Shot on location in 1953 by a group of blacklisted filmmakers, the film was boycotted by almost every theater in America but won major awards in Europe. It went into general U.S. release only in 1965.
AFisher / VCA 4050 Sewing Our Future. A Presentation of We Do the Work. Produced by Patrice O'Neill, Rhian Miller. Oakland: California Working, 1993. One videocassette (ca 30 min.): sd., col. A pre-NAFTA view of the effects of jobs moving overseas on the New York and American garment industry.
AFisher / VCA 991 The State of the Union. Produced by the New York Hotel-Motel Trades Council in association with Drew Biondo and John Turchiano; directed by Shari E. Norton. New York: The Council, 1985. One videocassette (28 min.): sd., col. with b&w sequences. This videotape portrays the work of the New York Hotel Trades Council, an organization of hotel workers unions. The film covers the Council's development from 1930s to the present. Peter Ward, Regional Director of Organizing, gives a detailed account of the causes, organization, negotiation and actions of the 1985 strike against New York City Hotel chains.
AFisher / VCA 1269 Sticking to the Union: Life of an ACWA Organizer, Louise Gugino Shanberg. A Film by Susan Bolles. New York: Bolles Productions, 1988. One videocassette (30 min.): sd., col. with b&w sequences. Shanberg discusses her life and career as a labor leader and organizer for the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America from 1929 to 1944. She describes early organizing efforts, strikes, and working with another well-known organizer and top woman leader in the ACWA, Dorothy Bellanca.
AFisher / VCA 3236 There's No Such Thing as Women's Work. United States Women's Bureau, Division of Information and Publications. Produced by United States Department of Labor, Division of Audiovisual Communication Services; distributed by National Women's History Project, 1987. One videocassette (30 min.): sd., col. with b&w sequences. Reviews the effects of various legislation on women in the workplace over the twentieth century and the role of the Women's Bureau, U.S. Department of Labor.
AFisher / VCA 4064 Turbulent Romance. A Presentation of We Do the Work. Oakland, Calif.: We Do the Work, 1993. One videocassette (17 min.): sd., col. with b&w sequences. A history of flight attendants and their unionization, based in large part on Georgia Panter Nielsen's From Sky to Flight Attendant (see listing in Scholarship on Women and Labor). Includes interviews with founders of the first stewardess union in the U.S. on United Airlines in the late 1940s.
AFisher / VCA 1138 The U.F.T. Story. Presented by The United Federation of Teachers; directed by Alan Lawrence. New York: U.F.T., 1966[?]. One videocassette (29 min.): sd., b&w. A history, beginning around 1960, of New York City's Local 2 of the United Federation of Teachers. Discusses strikes of 1960 and 1962 and contract struggles from 1963 to 1965, when New York City's teachers won many concessions in their quest for better pay, smaller classes, and a voice in policy-making and administration at their schools. See also the UFT Oral History Collection.
AFisher / VCA 511 Union Maids. A film by Julia Reichert, James Klein and Miles Mogulescu. Wayne, NJ: New Day Films, 1976. One videocassette (48 min.): sd., b&w. The reminiscences, mostly about the 1930s, of three Chicago-based labor organizers and radicals (two of the three women were openly "Red") who worked at the grass roots in their communities and in the laundry, meatpacking, and garment industries. Subjects were included in Alice and Staughton Lynd's collection, Rank and File: Personal Histories by Working-Class Organizers (Boston: Beacon Press, 1973).
AFisher / VCA 1704 Watsonville on Strike. A Documentary by Jon Silver. Watsonville, Calif.: Migrant Media Productions, 1989. One videocassette (65 min.): sd., col., with b&w sequences. In the fall of 1985, workers at the the Richard A. Shaw Frozen Food Company and the Watsonville Canning and Frozen Food Company in Watsonville, California, went on strike. Largely Mexican migrants or Mexican-American and mostly women, the workers struck over 30% wage cuts and loss of benefits. Many suspected their union, Teamsters Local 912, of apathy or of colluding with management. After bitter strikes of 5 months against one employer and 19 months against the other, workers won a partial victory, regaining their benefits but returning to work at lower wages.
AFisher / VCA 2084 Wild Women Don't Have the Blues. Calliope Films, Inc.; produced by Carol Doyle Van Valkenburgh, Christine Dall; directed by Christine Dall. San Francisco: California Newsreel, 1989. One videocassette (58 min.): sd., col. and b&w. Biographies of African-American women blues singers, including Ma Rainey, Ethel Waters, and Bessie Smith.
AFisher / VCA 508 The Willmar 8. California Newsreel; produced by Julie Thomson and Mary Beth Yarrow; directed by Lee Grant. San Francisco: California Newsreel, 1986[?], ©1980. One videocassette (55 min.): sd., col. In-depth portrait of the strike launched in the town of Willmar, Minnesota, in 1977 (first bank strike in the state's history) by eight female bank workers who had grown tired of training men for management positions.
AFisher / VCA 389 With Babies and Banners: The Story of the Women's Emergency Brigade. A film made by the Women's Labor History Film Project; director, producer, Lorraine Gray. New York: Cinema Guild, 1985[?], ©1977. One videocassette (45 min.): sd., col. with b&w sequences. Academy award-nominated history of women's crucial participation, as workers themselves and as wives and relatives of male workers, in the famous Flint, Michigan, sit-down strike of 1936-37 that launched the UAW.
AFisher / VCA 2748 And Woman Wove It in a Basket: The Way It Was Today. A Film by Bushra Azzouz, Marlene Farnum, and Nettie Kuneki. New York: Women Make Movies [distributor], 1989. One videocassette (70 min.): sd., col. with b&w sequences. Nettie Kuneki, a woman of the Klikitat Indian tribe of southwestern Washington State, discusses her life, the folklore and religious beliefs of her people, and the tradition of basketweaving for which the women of her tribe are famous. The materials and techniques used are detailed, and the craft is placed in historical context of tribal customs.
AFisher / VCA 505 The Women of Summer: The Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers, 1921-1938. Produced and directed by Suzanne Bauman. New York: Women of Summer, Inc.; Filmakers Library [distributor], 1985. One videocassette (55 min.): sd., col. with b&w sequences. A history of the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers (1921-1938) as seen through the eyes of its alumnae and other participants fifty years later, using unearthed diaries, letters, and historical film footage along with oral histories.