More about

We have put together a small selection of relevant festivals, archives and film collec­tions as well as lite­ra­tu­re we recommend. Further sug­ges­ti­ons are welcome!

Film Festivals

filmer le travail
Filmer le travail is an inter­na­tio­nal film festival about work and education that has been held in Poitier (France) since 2009 each February and offers a cross-genre programme for young and old as well as accom­pany­ing events.

Rochester Labor Film Series
An initia­ti­ve of the Rochester Labor Council and the George Eastman Museum, the Rochester Labor Film Series has presented feature films and docu­men­ta­ries since 1989 that depict important aspects of labor. Alle programme including detailed descrip­ti­ons of the appro­xi­mate­ly 300 films are available on the website.

Reel Work
The Reel Work May Day Labor Film Festival has taken place in and around Santa Cruz, Cali­for­nia, during the first week of May every year since 2000. The focus is on docu­men­ta­ries on ine­qua­li­ty issues and the history and culture of the labour movement.

Nordic Labor Film Festival
Nordic Labor Film Festival was started in 2017 by the film collec­ti­ve RåFILM, Malmö in col­la­bo­ra­ti­on with the Worker’s Edu­ca­tio­nal Asso­cia­ti­on, the trade unions Byggnads Skåne and Elek­trik­erför­bun­det, and the cinema Folkets Bio Panora. The Nordic Labour Film Festival is not a regular film festival but considers itself a meeting point for labour film in the Nordic region as well as a platform for a new workers’ movement.

this human world 
this human world is an annual film festival that has been taking place in Vienna since 2008. It presents inter­na­tio­nal and national docu­men­ta­ry, feature and animated films that deal with human rights worldwide. The “working realities” series, sponsored by the Vienna Chamber of Labour, focuses on work issues.

SVA Film Festival
The Society for Visual Anthro­po­lo­gy (SVA) is a section of the American Anthro­po­lo­gi­cal Asso­cia­ti­on and organises a film festival as part of its annual con­fe­rence that primarily shows non-fiction films by students, pro­fes­sio­nal anthro­po­lo­gists and pro­fes­sio­nal filmma­kers, including films on labour and labour migration.

Archives and Collections

www.labouronscreen.de
The “Film Database on Work and Precarity in European Film” is based on a sys­te­ma­tic screening of the most important European film festivals and contains, as of 2023, about 900 films on the topics of work and precarity. The database emerges from a research project at the Babels­berg Film Uni­ver­si­ty funded by the Hans Böckler Foundation.

Labor Film Database
The Labor Film Database offers over a thousand films and videos on labour, searcha­ble by keywords and cate­go­ries (such as labour migration, collec­ti­ve bar­gai­ning). Many of the entries also include trailers, film stills and dis­tri­bu­ti­on contact infor­ma­ti­on. There is also a list of current labour film festivals worldwide.

labournet.tv
labournet.tv is an online archive for films on workers’ struggles. Started in Berlin in 2011, the archive includes more than 850 videos from 60 countries — with araoun 50 new films each years. The films are subtitled in German and made available free of charge online and for events.

“Working class goes to hell“
Not a database in the classical sense, but a great film list of 263 films (as of 2023) on topics such as capi­ta­list explo­ita­ti­on, working con­di­ti­ons or struggle for rights compiled by a know­led­ge­ab­le user on MUBI. MUBI is a sub­scrip­ti­on-based streaming service that spe­cia­li­zes in arthouse films and classic films.

DVD-Sammlung “Arbeit im Film
In 2015, the Vienna Chamber of Labour began sys­te­ma­ti­cal­ly collec­ting work-related films and now offers library users around 300 DVDs. The selection includes classics, comedies and docu­men­ta­ries. The titles of some of these films are listed on the website.

PROGRESS
PROGRESS was founded in 1950 as the only film dis­tri­bu­tor in the German Demo­cra­tic Republic (GDR). Today, PROGRESS preserves and digitises an important part of the audio­vi­su­al memory of the 20th century and makes it freely acces­si­ble to the public. The steadily growing stock of currently around 24,000 films and sound record­ings from the beginning of the 20th century to the present day includes not only the complete film heritage of DEFA but also other collections.

Archiv­per­len des Schweizer Rundfunks
Swiss Broad­cas­ting (SRF) makes available on its website and Youtube channel about 1000 films or reports (as of 2023) from the archive of Swiss tele­vi­si­on, which concern common social issues and often relate to work, pro­fes­si­on or education.

European Film Gateway
The EFG Portal provides access to hundreds of thousands of film his­to­ri­cal documents as preserved in European film archives and ciné­ma­t­hè­ques: photos, posters, pro­gram­mes, perio­di­cals, cen­sor­s­hip documents, rare feature and docu­men­ta­ry films, newsreels and other materials.

Huntley Film Archives
Huntley Film Archives is a com­mer­cial British film archive named after film historian and archivist John Huntley. It features mainly docu­men­ta­ry and sometimes quirky and rare footage from the beginning of film, including labour, industry and social history.

Afpa WebTv
Afpa WebTv is a com­pre­hen­si­ve collec­tion of videos and docu­men­ta­ries on voca­tio­nal training from the National Agency for Adult Voca­tio­nal Training in France (L’Agence nationale pour la formation pro­fes­si­onnel­le des adultes — Afpa). Most of the videos are also available on their own Youtube channel (in French).

Journals

‘Images du travail, travail des images’
is a bi-annual open access journal in French published by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Poitiers since 2015 that reflects on images of work in the broadest sense from a social science and huma­nities perspective.

Bücher / Books

Attfield, S. (2020). Class on Screen: The Global Working Class in Con­tem­pora­ry Cinema. Springer Nature.

Beyfuss, E., Kossowsky, A., & Beuss, W. (1924). Das Kul­tur­film­buch. Chryselius.

Bonifazio, P. (2014). Schooling in modernity: The politics of sponsored films in postwar Italy: Uni­ver­si­ty of Toronto Press.

Bonah, C., Cantor D. & A. Laukötter (Ed.). (2018). Health education films in the twentieth century. Boydell & Brewer.

Büchter, K., & Kipp, M. (Eds.). (2007). Berufs­päd­ago­gisch-his­to­ri­sche Medi­en­ana­ly­se. Bilder, Fotos, Filme, Berufs­ord­nungs­mit­tel, Lehrgänge, Zeit­schrif­ten und Werks­bi­blio­the­ken (Vol. Band 21): BIS Verlag der Carl von Ossietzky Uni­ver­si­tät Oldenburg.

Büttner, C. (2022). Post­for­dis­ti­sche Fragmente: Filmische Arbeits­wel­ten und Reprä­sen­ta­tio­nen des Sozialen. In Post­for­dis­ti­sche Fragmente. Brill Fink.

Cramp, A., & McDougall, J. (2018). Doing Theory on Education: Using Popular Culture to Explore Key Debates. Routledge

Cuter, E., Kirsten, G., & Prenzel, H. (2022). Precarity in European Film: Depic­tions and Dis­cour­ses. De Gruyter.

Dahlquist, M., & Frykholm, J. (Eds.). (2020). The Insti­tu­tio­na­liz­a­ti­on of Edu­ca­tio­nal Cinema: North America and Europe in the 1910s and 1920s. Indiana Uni­ver­si­ty Press.

Fickinger, Bärbel (Hg.); (2007): Work in Progress: Kine­ma­to­gra­fien der Arbeit; Theorie, Kino–praxis, Filmindex; ein Projekt der Freunde der Deutschen Kine­ma­thek e.V. im Rahmen des Initia­tiv­pro­jek­tes Arbeit in Zukunft der Kul­tur­stif­tung des Bundes. Berlin: b_books. – Uni­ver­si­täts­bi­blio­thek Wien.

Institut Jugend Film Fernsehen (Hrsg.) (1982–1990). Zentrale Fil­mo­gra­fie Poli­ti­sche Bildung, 5 Bände, im Auftrag der Bun­des­zen­tra­le für poli­ti­sche Bildung, Leske+Budrich.

Kaes, A., Baer, N., & Cowan, M. (Eds.). (2019). The Promise of Cinema: German Film Theory, 1907–1933. Uni­ver­si­ty of Cali­for­nia Press.

Lillge, C., Ecker, G. (2019). Kulturen der Arbeit. Boston: BRILL.

Mazierska, E. (2015). From self-ful­film­ent to survival of the fittest — work in European cinema from the 1960s to the present. New York: Berghahn Books.

Mazierska, E. (Ed.) (2013). Work in Cinema: Labor and the Human Condition. New York: Palgrave Macmillan US.

Mennel, B. (2019). Women at work in twenty-first-century European cinema. Uni­ver­si­ty of Illinois Press.

Orgeron, D., Orgeron, M., & Streible, D. (Eds.). (2011). Learning with the lights off: Edu­ca­tio­nal film in the United States. Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press.

Pfeiffer, Peter C. und Nathan T. Tschepik (Hg.) (2020). Meanings of modern work in nine­teenth- and twenty-first-century German lite­ra­tu­re and film. Oxford, Bern, Berlin, Wien: Peter Lang.

Priem, K., & Herman, F. (2019). Fab­ri­ca­ting modern societies: Education, bodies, and minds in the age of steel. Brill.

Skvirsky, S. A. (2020). The Process Genre: Cinema and the Aesthetic of Labor. Duke Uni­ver­si­ty Press.

Sticchi, F. (2021). Mapping Precarity in Con­tem­pora­ry Cinema and Tele­vi­si­on: Chro­no­t­o­pes of Anxiety, Depres­si­on, Expulsion/Extinction. Palgrave Macmillan.

Trifonova, T. (2020). The Figure of the Migrant in Con­tem­pora­ry European Cinema. Bloo­ms­bu­ry Publi­shing USA.

Türk, K. (2000). Bilder der Arbeit: Eine iko­no­gra­fi­sche Antho­lo­gie. Springer-Verlag.
Vonderau, P., & Hediger, V. (2009). Films that Work: Indus­tri­al Film and the Pro­duc­ti­vi­ty of Media. Amsterdam Uni­ver­si­ty Press.

Vignaux, V. (2007). Jean Benoit Lévy ou le corps comme utopie. Une histoire du cinéma éducateur dans l’entre-deux-guerres en France AFRHC.

Zaniello, T. (2020). The cinema of the precariat: The exploited, underem­ploy­ed, and temp workers of the world. Bloo­ms­bu­ry Publi­shing USA.

Zaniello, T. (2003). Working stiffs, union maids, reds, and riffraff: an expanded guide to films about labor. Cornell Uni­ver­si­ty Press.

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