05 · 01 · 18

Five films for labour day

Alonso Díaz de la Vega @diazdelavega1

 

For most people, Labour Day is simply a holiday but, given its origins —the commemoration of a strike that ended in a dynamite explosion during the final stages of the nineteenth century in Chicago— it may also be a moment of rumination upon what it means to be a worker or an employer in a world in which labor relations are not always up to the noblest ideals. That’s why we present here five essential films that explore the rights of workers and their struggles to keep their dignity and their means.

I, Daniel Blake (2016, Dir. Ken Loach)

In the first recognized co-directing job of Gorin’s —one of Godard’s most important contributors during the 70’s—, the duo explores class struggle and the motives that drove the May 1968 strikers with a critical eye that’s also cinematically subversive. All this happens in the backdrop of a strike in a sausage factory that has a powerful effect on a French-American couple played by Jane Fonda and Yves Montand.