Movies Similar to Northern Minnesota's Labor Wars

Ms Rhymney Valley(1985)

Portrait of a community in the heart of South Wales almost one year into the miners' strike of the 1980s.

Earth(1931)

A main agenda of the prewar farmer's movement was struggle against landowners. Prokino also considered this as their prime concern. The main title sequence and the latter part of the film have unfortunately been lost. While we cannot see its entire structure, we can still get a glimpse of it from this surviving short.

0.0

Fish or Cut Bait(1993)

In the 1970's, filmmakers Tom Burger, Bill McKiggan and Chuck Lapp began documenting the history and current struggles of inshore fishermen in Atlantic Canada to form a union. Until 1979 it was illegal for fishermen to form a union in Nova Scotia. The committed funding from the National Film Board was withdrawn for this film, however the filmmakers continued to edit the film by entering the NFB at night. The CBC refused to broadcast the film, but it was finally released in 1990 and broadcast nationally that year on Vision TV.

0.0

The Uprising of '34(1995)

Textile workers recall with pride the long- suppressed story of the General Textile Strike of 1934 when 500,000 Southern mill laborers walked off their jobs.

0.0

The Flickering Flame(1996)

Documentary following dockers of Liverpool sacked in a labour dispute and their supporters’ group, Women of the Waterfront, as they receive support from around the world and seek solidarity at the TUC conference.

5.7

First Daughter and the Black Snake(2017)

The “Prophecy of the 7th Fire” says a “black snake” will bring destruction to the earth. For Winona LaDuke, the “black snake” is oil trains and pipelines. When she learns that Canadian-owned Enbridge plans to route a new pipeline through her tribe’s 1855 Treaty land, she and her community spring into action to save the sacred wild rice lakes and preserve their traditional indigenous way of life. Launching an annual spiritual horse ride along the proposed pipeline route, speaking at community meetings and regulatory hearings. Winona testifies that the pipeline route follows one of historical and present-day trauma. The tribe participates in the pipeline permitting process, asserting their treaty rights to protect their natural resources. LaDuke joins with her tribe and others to demand that the pipelines’ impact on tribal people’s resources be considered in the permitting process.

5.0

Wildcat: The Struggle for Democracy in the New Zealand Timberworkers' Union(1981)

Delegates and workers discuss the issues that effect the Timberworkers’ Union, the reasons for the formation of the Combined Council of Timber Workers Delegates (CCD) and their industrial action.

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Wellstone!(2004)

Paul Wellstone was the charismatic Minnesota progressive who used grassroots organizing to get elected and give ordinary people a stake in government. His 3rd election campaign was cut short when his small plane crashed into the north woods of Minnesota just 11 days before the 2002 election. Wellstone! explores the origin of his politics, his controversial road to the United States Senate, his deep bond with his wife and 'co-senator' Sheila, and the legacy of a life of progressive populism.

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Solidarność: How Solidarity Changed Europe(2019)

Gdańsk, Poland, September 1980. Lech Wałęsa and other Lenin shipyard workers found Solidarność (Solidarity), the first independent trade union behind the Iron Curtain. The long and hard battle to bring down communist dictatorship has begun.

7.0

Taxiklubben(2017)

Allonias decides that enough is enough. He works 12-13 hours driving his taxi every day and still has no money left to pay for rent and clothes for their three children. He begins a battle against Sweden’s largest taxi company owned by billionaire Rolf Karlsson. It leads to Rolf Karlsson selling the entire empire for around 2-3 billion SEK. But for Allonias it has a high price…

0.0

Thatcher vs The Miners: The Battle for Britain(2021)

On the 5th of March 1985, a crowd gathered in a South Yorkshire pit village to watch a sight none of them had seen in a year. The villagers, many of them in tears, cheered and clapped as the men of Grimethorpe Colliery marched back to work accompanied by the village’s world-famous brass band. The miners and their families had endured months of hardship. It had all been for nothing. The miners had lost the strike called on March 6th 1984. They would lose a lot more in the years to come. But was it a good thing for the country that the miners lost their last battle?

0.0

The Main Stream(2002)

Humorist Roy Blount Jr. takes viewers on a journey down the Mississippi River, showcasing everything from areas with spectacularly beautiful scenery to ugly and dangerously polluted stretches bordered by industrial development.

4.0

Harlan County U.S.A.(1977)

This film documents the coal miners' strike against the Brookside Mine of the Eastover Mining Company in Harlan County, Kentucky in June, 1973. Eastovers refusal to sign a contract (when the miners joined with the United Mine Workers of America) led to the strike, which lasted more than a year and included violent battles between gun-toting company thugs/scabs and the picketing miners and their supportive women-folk. Director Barbara Kopple puts the strike into perspective by giving us some background on the historical plight of the miners and some history of the UMWA. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with New York Women in Film & Television in 2004.

7.5

Union(2024)

Up against one of the most powerful companies on the planet, a group of Amazon workers embark on an unprecedented campaign to unionize their warehouse in Staten Island, New York.

0.0

Railroad Man(1967)

The story of the railroad man in his role in keeping the trains moving on the rails.

6.0

The Seafarers(1953)

Members of the American Federation of Labor, the Atlantic & Gulf Coast District of the Seafarers International Union commissioned budding filmmaker and magazine photographer Stanley Kubrick to direct this half-hour documentary. The director's first film in color, it is more of an industrial film than a documentary, it served as a promotional tool to recruit sailors to the union.

4.5

A Friend Indeed: The Bill Sackter Story(2008)

The true story of Bill Sackter's emergence from lifelong institutionalization, to become an international hero for people with disabilities.

0.0

Brothers on the Line(2012)

Brothers on the Line explores the extraordinary journey of the Reuther brothers – Walter, Roy, and Victor – union organizers whose unshakeable devotion led an army of workers into an epic human rights struggle.

7.5

A Century of Struggle(1981)

A Century of Struggle chronicles the hundred-year history of the NZ Seamen’s Union from its formation in 1879. Using original film and archive footage, it examines the working lives of seamen and the battles fought by their union from the sailing ships of colonial days to the modern turbine-powered container vessels. Because the Seamen’s Union was frequently at the forefront of working-class struggle in New Zealand, its story involves most of the crucial issues and events in the history of the union movement generally, including the great maritime strikes of 1890 and 1913 and the waterfront dispute of 1951.

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American Dream(1990)

When workers at the Hormel meatpacking plant in Austin, Minnesota are asked to take a substantial pay cut in a highly profitable year, the local labor union decides to go on strike and fight for a wage they believe is fair. But as the work stoppage drags on and the strikers face losing everything, friends become enemies, families are divided and the very future of this typical mid American town is threatened.

7.2