Films featuring manual labour
Kaneto Shindo’s The Naked Island would be a good one.
araya d. margot benacerraf (1959)
Thanks for these, any slightly more contemporary examples?
This is the closest I could find: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1024699/
RDRR
2009’s “Alamar”
docs or fiction?
wang bing – rust
sergei loznitsa – fabrika
jennifer baichwal – manufactured landscapes
peter hutton – at sea
sharon lockhart -double tide
as for recent fiction…hmm…there’s the field workers in manoel de oliveira’s strange case of angelica, that poignantly pointedly recalls his 1931 film ‘douro, faina fluvial’….
Psst… Mike Leigh…
Agrarian Utopia – Uruphong Raksasad
Heaven and Earth – Michael Pilz
Belfast, Maine – Frederick Wiseman
Everyday Life in a Syrian Village – Omar Amiralay
A Japanese Village and Red Persimmons – Shinsuke Ogawa and Shinsuke Ogawa/Peng Xiaolian
And Kaurismaki’s so-called “Proletariat trilogy” comes to mind for fiction. So does Liu’s Oxhide and Oxhide II.
Agrarian Utopia – Uruphong Raksasad
ah thank you! i was going mad trying to remember that…i just had the images in my head…
Some that immediately come to mind are Days Of Heaven, There Will Be Blood, The Machinist…
oh and of course glawogger’s workingman’s death
Fitzcarraldo
Le Quattro Volte
Nice call on Workingman’s Death.
Also, big ups to Jerry! Those De Seta shorts are superb.
Credit goes to magpies, who introduced them to me.
and i’d credit arsaib, who introduced them to me, if i could.
Reygadas’ fictional Japon features a real construction crew dismantling the old woman’s house, and their muttering dialogue is primarily them bitching about how poorly they’re being treated by the filmmakers. About the coolest self-referential thing you’ll ever seen in a movie.
Big ups to everyone, then…
How about Barren Lives (Nelson Pereira dos Santos)? Bill Douglas’ masterpiece Comrades may fit..
On a prison vein:
Cool Hand Luke
A Man Escaped
Shawshank Redemption
Alcatraz
I am Fugitive From a Chain Gang
A Prophet
oh and i remembered these little docs, leon hirszman’s three ‘cantos de trabalho’ – mutirão, cacau & cana-de-açúcar
oh and huppert in godard’s passion…and the opera in the fish market in portabella’s warsaw bridge…and guerin’s work in progress….and haha the roadworkers in kossakovsky’s hush!…
Norma Rae
F.I.S.T.
North Country
On the Waterfront
Our Daily Bread (Nikolaus Geyrhalter)
The Brickmakers (Marta Rodrigues/Jorge Silva)
Le Quattro Volte
no mention of Extraordinary Stories yet?? I thought everyone on mubi got wet for that film. it’s damn good.
Ask the film crew grips et al about manual labor.
THE MOLLY MAGUIRES (Martin Ritt)
BUBBLE (Steven Soderbergh)
FAST FOOD NATION (Richard Linklater)
CHE (Steven Soderbergh) – I added CHE because it deals with the manual labour involved in a revolution. It is very process oriented.
Patrick Brian Smith
Hello,
I was wondering if anyone could suggest some films that are structured around manual labour? In the vein of La Libertad (Alonso) or I Don’t Want to Sleep Alone (Ming-Liang) – especially featuring unbroken or long takes of physical labour.
Thanks