Roll ‘em: These Movies Could Change Your Work Life…

By Joe Maniscalco

Season 12 of the Workers Unite! Film Festival opens in New York City on Friday and even though it’s been around for more than a decade, its organizers are still thinking fresh with a sharp eye on cultivating the next generation of labor-conscious activists.

“A lot of labor people forgot that you have to keep talking to the younger generations and explain this stuff to them — it’s not automatic that they understand,” Executive Director Andrew Tilson tells Work-Bites.

Runtimes for the more than 40 worker-themed films playing over the next two weeks starting out at the Cinema Village on E. 12th Street vary from a 2-minute shortie featuring the New York State Nurses Association [NYSNA] on strike — all the way up to a 3-part, 264-minute restoration of the epic “Battle of Chile” from the late 1970s.

But the “Battle of Chile” is the outlier — most of the films constituting this year’s edition of the Workers Unite! Film Festival run well under the established feature runtime of 90 minutes — and that’s the way the festival organizers like it.

“People’s attention spans are shorter,” Tilson says. “They look at their phone 20 seconds to read the news — so, the trick is to get somebody to focus for seven to ten minutes to get a whole story.”

This year’s festival will see contributions from More Perfect Union — the worker-centric outfit specializing in producing short, powerful takes on the lives of working people and delivering them across social media platforms.

The Workers Unite! Film Festival has always been about using the movies as a means of connecting people and spurring them into labor activism — this year is no different. 

“The goal is that somebody at a job site who is pissed off and angry sees a film — or a couple of films — and realizes they’re not alone — that people are organizing and there is a way to do this,” Tilson says.

In years past, festival organizers have also sponsored intensive six-hour “filmmaker bootcamps” to help make sure burgeoning filmmakers have a way of attaining the foundational know-how needed to create work that both inspires and instructs. 

“The idea,” Tilson adds, “is to not only sit in the theater and screen films, but to create a whole generation of filmmakers — create more people making these kinds of films — put them on social media so that their fellow workers, colleagues and friends see the stories that are actually out there — but are too often ignored.”

This year’s festival also includes a virtual component — so “people from around the world are able to watch these movies together.”

Season 12 of the Workers Unite! Film Festival kicks of on Friday, Oct. 27 - click here for the complete rundown of all the shows, as well as tickets.