AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center

Organized and presented by the Metropolitan Washington Council of the AFL-CIO, the Debs-Jones-Douglass Institute and the American Film Institute, DC Labor FilmFest 2007 boasts an array of new films and beloved classics about work and workers, from the American office to the far-flung factories of the global economy. For more information, visit www.dclabor.org.

AFI member passes will be accepted at all screenings in the DC Labor FilmFest except the Opening Night Special Event.

IT'S A FREE WORLD: the films of Ken Loach

Acclaimed filmmaker Ken Loach's films have moved and inspired audiences for over five decades. A tireless activist, Loach has continually championed the world's underprivileged and working-class citizens while challenging the establishment and oppressors of human rights. In honor of his visit, AFI Silver and DC Labor FilmFest proudly presents a collection of his films including WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?, LAND AND FREEDOM, RIFF-RAFF, KES, POOR COW, and his latest, the Cannes Palme d'Or winner THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY, starring Cillian Murphy.

Special thanks to Jim Healy at the George Eastman House and Mike Mashon at the Library of Congress for their invaluable support and collaboration in presenting this series.

SPECIAL EVENT!
OPENING NIGHT:
~~Director Ken Loach in Person with~~
The US Premiere of
IT'S A FREE WORLD
Thursday, October 11, 7:00

Due to unforseen personal circumstances, Mr. Loach is unable to attend the US premiere of IT'S A FREE WORLD.

Sacked for bad behavior, Polish migrant Angie sets up a recruitment agency with her flat-mate Rose, working in a twilight zone between gangmasters, employment agencies and the migrant workers they place. This is a tale set against the reality of the Anglo Saxon miracle of flexible labor, globalization, double shifts and lots of happy, happy, happy consumers: Us. Hundreds of thousands of migrants have come to Britain since the enlargement of the European Union in 2004. While many are prospering, those at the bottom of the heap - the unskilled, the non-English speakers - are becoming a new kind of workforce.

DIR/PROD Ken Loach; SCR Paul Laverty; PROD Rebecca O'Brien. UK/Italy/Germany/Spain, 2007, color, 96 min. NOT RATED

$15 general admission/$12 for AFI Members

This screening benefits the DC Employment Justice Center, dedicated to securing, protecting, and promoting workplace justice in the D.C. metropolitan area. Find out more at www.dcej.org.

BREAD AND ROSES

"When we put on uniforms, we become invisible."

Ken Loach's only film set in the United States begins with the harrowing journey of an illegal immigrant smuggled across the Mexican border and ends with the triumphal march of janitors through the streets of Los Angeles. Illegal immigrant Maya (Pilar Padilla) works cleaning offices at night in LA's gleaming skyscrapers, where low wages, lack of health care, sick pay, vacations and job security spark interest in the union being organized by Sam (a pre-PIANIST Adrien Brody). With the debate over immigrant rights still raging at the national and local level — and billions being spent to fence and patrol the US-Mexico border — BREAD AND ROSES is more relevant than ever.

DIR Ken Loach; SCR Paul Laverty; PROD Rebecca O'Brien. UK/ France/ Germany/ Spain/ Italy/ Switzerland, 2000, color, 110 min. RATED R

Thursday, October 11, 9:45

RIFF-RAFF

The European Film Award for Best Picture went to this film's deft combination of earthy humor with a bluntly realistic depiction of British working-class life in the 1990s. Scottish ex-con Robert Carlyle tries to start anew by working construction in North London. He can't afford a flat, so his coworkers arrange a squat for him where he falls for an aspiring singer. Carlyle and his mates navigate low pay and dangerous working conditions, while a bleak reality constantly encroaches.

DIR Ken Loach; SCR Bill Jesse; PROD Sally Hibbin. UK, 1990, color, 95 min. NOT RATED

Friday, October 12, 5:00; Sunday, October 14, 12:30* Double Feature with WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

Single screening

Double Feature

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

Shown here in a rare theatrical screening, Loach's brilliant documentary offers the workers' perspective, largely ignored by the mass media, on the widespread British miners' strike of the early 1980s. Loach was commissioned during the strike to make a film about the music and poetry arising from it, but when he included footage of police brutality, the networks balked and the program was pulled for being too political.

DIR/PROD Ken Loach. UK, 1984, color, 53 min. NOT RATED

Sunday, October 14, 12:30* Double Feature with RIFF-RAFF

LAND AND FREEDOM

"Among the finest films of the decade" - The Observer

Recipient of the European Film Award for Best Film and awarded two prizes at Cannes, Loach's controversial epic of the Spanish Civil War blends political drama with brutally compelling action scenes. Unemployed Liverpool laborer Ian Hart attends a Communist meeting and is persuaded to join a volunteer militia fighting the brutal Fascist regime in Spain. The bonds of camaraderie tighten as he finds himself falling for fellow soldier Rosana Pastor and learning the bitter lessons of political reality.

DIR Ken Loach; SCR Jim Allen; PROD Rebecca O'Brien. UK/Spain/Germany/Italy, 1995, color, 109 min. In English, Spanish and Catalan with English subtitles. NOT RATED

Saturday, October 13, 3:00; Tuesday, October 16, 9:15

POOR COW

Loach set his first feature film in the dark underbelly of Swinging London, with Terence Stamp in a lead role and a soundtrack by Donovan. Eighteen-year-old Joy (Carol White) has a life that's anything but joyful. When her abusive husband Tom (John Bindon) is imprisoned, his best friend Dave (Stamp) takes her and her infant son in, but his arrest leaves Joy back where she started — and unable to protect her son.

DIR/SCR Ken Loach; SCR Neil Dunn, based on his novel; PROD Joseph Janni. UK, 1967, color, 101 min. NOT RATED

Saturday, October 13, 1:00; Monday, October 15, 9:30

KES

"One of the great adolescent portraits in cinema." - Mike Robbins, Senses of Cinema

Seventh on the British Film Institute's list of the greatest British films, KES is Loach's masterpiece and a watershed of 1960s cinema. In the bleak mining town of Barnsley where a lifetime working in the mines seems inevitable, fifteen-year-old Billy Casper is bullied at school and at home, but his zest, intelligence and hopefulness surface when he raises and trains a kestral (falcon).

DIR/SCR Ken Loach; SCR Tony Garnett and Barry Hines, based on his book A Kestrel for a Knave; PROD Tony Garnett. UK, 1969, color, 110 min. NOT RATED

Sunday, October 14, 9:45; Tuesday, October 16, 7:00

THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY

Winner of the Palme d'Or at the 2006 Cannes Film Festival

In 1920s Ireland, workers form volunteer guerilla armies to face the ruthless British "black and tan" squads sent to block Ireland's bid for independence. Damien (Cillian Murphy) abandons his burgeoning career as a doctor to fight for freedom with his brother Teddy. When a proposed peace treaty divides the Irish, Damien and Teddy soon find themselves in opposing camps. (Note courtesy of IFC First Take)

DIR Ken Loach; SCR Paul Laverty; PROD Rebecca O'Brien. UK, 2006, color, 127 min. NOT RATED

Monday, October 15, 4:30,7:00; Tuesday, October 16, 4:30; Wednesday, October 17, 4:30

Office workers of the world, unite...You have nothing to lose but your TPS reports!

A perennial Labor FilmFest favorite, the outrageously funny and twisted OFFICE SPACE returns this year with Gary Cole as the smarmy and self-satisfied boss and Ron Livingston as the fed-up 9-to-5er who decides to exact financial justice on the computer company where he works. Ignored on theatrical release, the film (with a young Jennifer Aniston) has become a cult classic.

DIR/SCR Mike Judge; PROD Daniel Rappaport and Michael Rotenberg. US, 1999, color, 89 min. RATED R

Telemarketer Todd (Josh Hamilton) sells cheap novelty products over the phone from Seattle, until his entire Order Fulfillment Department is outsourced to India. Todd keeps his job by agreeing to train his replacements in Mumbai. Here he meets young people as mystified by the American desire for hot dog grilling machines and hats in the shape of Swiss cheese as he is by the cow that just wandered in from outside.

DIR/SCR John Jeffcoat; SCR George Wing; PROD Tom Gorai. US, 2006, color, 98 min. NOT RATED

Based on a true story, this feel-good comedy won the Japanese film critics' award for best film of 2006 and was Japan's submission for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. It's 1965, and the chilly northeastern Japanese mining town of Iwaki has just lost 2000 jobs. The mine company is building a Hawaiian-themed village to attract tourists and replace revenue, but union miners are boycotting the plan. When the mine hires a hula dance teacher from Tokyo, the miners' daughters seize the opportunity to liven up their conservative town.

DIR/SCR Sang-il Lee; SCR Daisuke Habara; PROD Hitomi Ishihara. Japan, 2006, color, 108 min. In Japanese with English subtitles. NOT RATED

In stunning slow-moving images, director Geyrhalter's unsettling and artistic documentary unveils the places where food is grown and processed: the disorienting landscapes of agricultural machinery, processing plants, slaughterhouses and greenhouses. Intense and troubling, the film documents the industrialization of our food supply--and the ironic dehumanization and brutality of a process intended to sustain life.

DIR/SCR/PROD Nikolaus Geyrhalter; SCR Wolfgang Widerhofer; PROD Markus Glaser, Michael Kitzberger and Wolfgang Widerhofer. Germany/Austria, 2006, color, 92 min. In German and Polish with English subtitles. NOT RATED

Corporate wheeling and dealing and the ethics of downsizing strike a personal note in director Moutout's debut film. In his job at a Parisian consulting firm, Jérémie Renier (of Dardenne brothers fame) is assigned to prepare a small factory for takeover, unbeknownst to the employees. When he feels the stirrings of moral opposition, he questions the validity of work that involves deciding whether others will lose their jobs.

DIR/SCR Jean-Marc Moutout; SCR Olivier Gorce and Ghislaine Jégou; PROD Milena Poylo and Gilles Sacuto. France/Belguim, 2003, color, 99 min. In French with English subtitles. NOT RATED

Loosely based on the true story of Anna Walentynowicz, a Polish welder who became politicized after an industrial accident left several men dead and their families uncompensated, STRIKE explores the early beginnings of Poland's remarkable Solidarity movement. Director Schloendorff (THE TIN DRUM) mixes strong use of vintage newsreels with passionate dramatic performances.

DIR Volker Schloendorff; SCR Sylke Rene Meyer and Andreas Pflueger. Germany/Poland, 2006, color, 104 min. In English, Polish and German with English subtitles. NOT RATED