Best movies like Pobres habrá siempre

By the start of World War II, Paul Robeson had given up his lucrative mainstream work to participate in more socially progressive film and stage productions. Robeson committed his support to Paul Strand and Leo Hurwitz’s political semidocumentary Native Land. With Robeson’s narration and songs, this beautifully shot and edited film exposes violations of Americans’ civil liberties and is a call to action for exploited workers around the country. Scarcely shown since its debut, Native Land represents Robeson’s shift from narrative cinema to the leftist documentaries that would define the final chapter of his controversial film career.

In 1889 pioneers race ahead of the law to claim free land in Oklahoma, forming wide-open towns. In one such, citizens elect Milt Dawson to challenge the self-appointed rule of gambler Ace Holmes, only to have him shot in the back. But leading the next batch of settlers is Milt's quick-on-the-draw son John, who gets help from friendly outlaws.

Norma Rae is a southern textile worker employed in a factory with intolerable working conditions. This concern about the situation gives her the gumption to be the key associate to a visiting labor union organizer. Together, they undertake the difficult, and possibly dangerous, struggle to unionize her factory.

A proud black man and his school-teacher wife face discriminatory challenges in 1960s America.

Fisherman Dutch marries cannery worker Hattie. After he is kicked out of his union and fired from his job he leaves Hattie who steals money for him and goes to jail. He gets a new job, foils a plot to dynamite the ship, and promises to wait for Hattie.

In 1969, an administrator runs against the corrupt president of the United Coal Miners Union, and becomes the target of a murder plot.

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.

Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, 1876. A secret society of Irish coal miners, bond by a sacred oath, put pressure on the greedy and ruthless company they work for by sabotaging mining facilities in the hope of improving their working conditions and the lives of their families.

MEAT traces the process through which cattle and sheep become consumer goods. It depicts the processing and transportation of meat products by a highly automated packing plant, illustrating important points and problems in the area of production, transportation, logistics, equipment design, time-motion study, and labor management.

Dr. Bill Matthews is struck by lighting. While recovering at the hospital where he works, he begins an intimate relationship with Dr. Craig Murphy, who invites Bill to join a strange group of lightning survivors.

Brit Amelia Blake travels to America to join her son Alfred. Fate forces her to hitchhike to California, a perilous journey that she shares with kind young Judy Martin. When Judy and another fellow traveler discover the unfortunate truth about Alfred, they struggle to spare Amelia's feelings.

In a parallel present, delivery man Ray Tincelli is struggling to support himself and his ailing younger brother. After a series of two-bit hustles and unsuccessful swindles, Ray takes a job in a strange new realm of the gig economy: trekking deep into the forest, pulling cable over miles of terrain to connect large, metal cubes that link together the new quantum trading market. As he gets pulled deeper into the zone, he encounters growing hostility and the threat of robot cablers, and must choose to either help his fellow workers or to get rich and get out.

In early nineteenth-century France Jean Valjean, an ex-convict who failed to report to parole, is relentlessly pursued over a twenty-year period by Javert, an obsessive policeman.

Marc Hall, a young man living in Quebec, registers his prom date as per his Catholic school's rules. He is denied his request, because his prom date is a boy. Marc Hall is an openly gay teenager in a very conservative Catholic school. This film documents his struggles (legal, emotional, ethical and personal) to be himself and to live his life the way he deems best. With the help of friends, family and supporters, "Cinderfella" makes it to the ball, With his Prince Charming.

In the 1920s, the rights of American workers to join a labor union was still considered an open question, and African-Americans were routinely denied their civil and economic rights. 10,000 Black Men Named George, the title, refers to the fact Pullman porters were often called "George" by white passengers, which was considered a racial slur.

Trying to put himself back together after serving prison time for robbery, Paul takes a job as a parks employee in a small Connecticut town. His co-worker, Murph, a generation older than Paul, is dealing with his own issues, chiefly the the impending death of his very ill gay son. After the men have a run-in with local snob Frederickson, Murph's age and experience starts to temper Paul's fiery nature, as the younger man begins to embrace his new life.

As a gay man, filmmaker Arshad Khan examines his troubled relationship with his devout, Muslim father Abu. Using family archives and movies, Khan explores his struggle with his identity and compares it to his parents attempts to fit into Canada.

A mother obsessed with mind-altering televangelism consequently vomits a pulsating growth that slithers down the throat of her son during the night. Upon spewing the parasite, the son is driven by an uncontrollable force to murder and feed corpses to the now-multiple-toothed monsters manifesting throughout the house. This gory, shot-on-Super-8 regional rarity is a micro-budget salute to H.G. Lewis and H.P. Lovecraft. — Evan Husney, Drafthouse Films

A documentary about the production of From Dusk Till Dawn (1996) and the people who made it.

WELFARE shows the nature and complexity of the welfare system in sequences illustrating the staggering diversity of problems that constitute welfare: housing, unemployment, divorce, medical and psychiatric problems, abandoned and abused children, and the elderly. These issues are presented in a context where welfare workers as well as clients struggle to cope with and interpret the laws and regulations that govern their work and life.

A Kentucky woman whose mine-worker husband is nearly killed in a cave-in, and whose father is slowly dying of black lung disease, joins the picket lines for a long, violent strike.

A group of Black soldiers are home from the war and head to a small Southern town. The town is dominated by a group of Klansmen who keep the Black majority from voting or being treated like human beings. However, these newcomers convince the local population to register to vote so they can take back power and achieve justice. When hundreds show up to register, the Klan responds with violence. Eventually, though, the Black community has little choice other than fight back and the film ends with a small war between these combat vets and the Klan.

Fay Wray plays Jean Hastings, the wealthy and spoiled scion of a factory-owning family led by her irrepressible grandmother. Sparks fly when Jean meets Jim Devlin, the labor leader who’s spearheading a tense worker’s strike against the factory. After circumstances force Jean and Jim to spend a night together in his cabin, she begins questioning her family’s ruthless tactics. This hard-to-see Columbia film by British director Roy William Neill not only features Wray as a brunette but also includes an explosive depiction of labor strife. (Block Cinema)

Rarity's friendship with Applejack is tested when Vignette Valencia hires her as her new designer for a theme park parade.

A biography of the civil-rights activist and labor organizer Cesar Chavez. Chronicling the birth of a modern American labour movement, Cesar Chavez tells the story of the famed civil rights leader and labour organiser torn between his duties as a husband and father and his commitment to securing a living wage for farm workers. Passionate but soft-spoken, Chavez embraced non-violence as he battled greed and prejudice in his struggle to bring dignity to working people.

Dramatization of the true story of the so-called Willmar Eight, a group of Minnesota bank workers who braved freezing conditions whilst picketing their branch in a struggle for union rights.

A husband makes fun of his wife's theatrical aspirations when she agrees to appear in a local production. When she begins to neglect him, he decides to retaliate by also going on stage.

A simple Pennsylvania coal miner is drawn into the violent conflict between union workers and management.

This documentary was broadcast on the Turner Classic Movies (TCM) cable channel to kick off the presentation of films related to TCM's theme of the month for September 2001. Actors Lee Grant and Paul Mazursky, producer Roger Corman, director John Carpenter, film critic Molly Haskell, and journalist Peter Biskind discuss the issues involved in six films of the 1950s. Topics include teenage loneliness, youth rebellion, changing gender roles, and the beginning of the sexual revolution.

John Middleton is investigating cattle rustling when he is captured and tossed into a cave with Emmett, a rancher who disappeared earlier. They help each other escape and learn that a local banker is trying to scare everyone away to grab up some secret gold mines.

In 1920, workers from Patagonia, in Southern Argentina, gather around an anarcho-syndicalist society and go on strike, demanding better working conditions. When the situation turns unsustainable, President Yrigoyen sends Lieutenant Colonel Zavala to impose order.

A genre-bending 'operatic cinema' featuring 18 classical music pieces, this psychological horror feature tells the story of a young couple that has issues when confronted with an unexpected pregnancy. A film that explores love, romance, and changing gender roles, and most of all, themes of power and control.

An accident leaves a selfish racer blind and paralyzed, and he falls in love with the nurse who attends him.

A ham-handed cautionary fable against communism, the film concerns a group of Civil War veterans who are appalled by the burgeoning radical movement in America.

When a construction worker unexpectedly joins a local theater's production of Romeo and Juliet, the drama onstage starts to mirror his own life.