The Organizer

The epic tale of a class struggle in twentieth century Italy, as seen through the eyes of two childhood friends on opposing sides.

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.

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

Maya is a quick-witted young woman who comes over the Mexican border without papers and makes her way to the LA home of her older sister Rosa. Rosa gets Maya a job as a janitor: a non-union janitorial service has the contract, the foul-mouthed supervisor can fire workers on a whim, and the service-workers' union has assigned organizer Sam Shapiro to bring its "justice for janitors" campaign to the building. Sam finds Maya a willing listener, she's also attracted to him. Rosa resists, she has an ailing husband to consider. The workers try for public support; management intimidates workers to divide and conquer. Rosa and Maya as well as workers and management may be set to collide.

In the 1890s, Father Adolf Daens goes to Aalst, a textile town where child labor is rife, pay and working conditions are horrible, the poor have no vote, and the Catholic church backs the petite bourgeoisie in oppressing workers. He writes a few columns for the Catholic paper, and soon workers are listening and the powerful are in an uproar. He's expelled from the Catholic party, so he starts the Christian Democrats and is elected to Parliament. After Rome disciplines him, he must choose between two callings, as priest and as champion of workers. In subplots, a courageous young woman falls in love with a socialist and survives a shop foreman's rape; children die; prelates play billiards.

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.

This film documents the coal miners' strike against the Brookside Mine of the Eastover Mining Company in Harlan County, Kentucky in June, 1973. Eastovers refusal to sign a contract (when the miners joined with the United Mine Workers of America) led to the strike, which lasted more than a year and included violent battles between gun-toting company thugs/scabs and the picketing miners and their supportive women-folk. Director Barbara Kopple puts the strike into perspective by giving us some background on the historical plight of the miners and some history of the UMWA.

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.

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.

After promising 1100 employees that they would protect their jobs, the managers of a factory decide to suddenly close up shop. Laurent takes the lead in a fight against this decision.

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.

In the early 1900s, the legendary Joe Hill emigrates with his brother to the United States. But after a short time, he loses touch with his brother. Joe gets a few jobs but is struck by all the injustice and tragedy going on. He becomes active in the forbidden union IWW, a union for workers without trades. It is forbidden to demonstrate and to speak in public but Joe gets around that by singing his manifests with the Salvation Army. He manages to get more and more people to go on strike with him but he also makes powerful enemies doing that. Finally he gets connected with a murder and during the trial he fires his lawyer and takes upon himself to become his own defender.

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.

Sentenced to life imprisonment for illegal activities, Italian International member Giulio Manieri holds on to his political ideals while struggling against madness in the loneliness of his prison cell.

Brest, 1950. The war ended five years ago and nothing remains of the city. Massive bombings and intense fighting lasting more than a month turned the city, its docks, its arsenal, into ashes. Thousands of workers will build it up again, brick by brick. But with awful work conditions protests quickly arise and a strike begins. Violent confrontations happen during manifestations. Until one man falls. The next day René Vautier lands at Brest clandestinely to make a movie about the movement.

Charles Dickens' haunting semi-autobiographical tale of a boy who is sent away by his stepfather after his mother dies but manages to triumph over incredible adversities.

Lenny Belardo, the youngest and first American Pope in the history of the Church, must establish his new papacy and navigate the power struggles of the closed, secretive Vatican.

A bus driver and his sewer worker friend struggle to strike it rich while their wives look on with weary patience. One of the most influential situation comedy television series in American history.

How much do you know about the person working next to you? From the outside, life at Mackintosh Textiles appears to run smoothly, but in a community with so many secrets to hide, things are far from straightforward. In six powerful, self-contained dramas, everyday life is fractured by tumultuous marriages, snatched passions, disappearing husbands and gang harassment.

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) was a mediocre who rose to power because of the blindness and ignorance of the Germans, who believed he was nothing more than an eccentric dreamer. But when the crisis of 1929 devastated the economy, the population, fearful of chaos and communism, voted for him. And no one defended democracy. As the dictatorship extended its relentless shadow, the leader claimed peace, but was preparing the Apocalypse.

In 2008, a fight over land in a seaside town near Rome spirals into a deadly battle between organized crime, corrupt politicians and the Vatican.

Surviving power struggles, betrayals and plots, Hitler's inner circle of Nazi leaders seizes control of Germany and designs its disastrous future.

A major political, historical, human and economic fact of the 20th century, the Gulag, the extremely punitive Soviet concentration camp system, remains largely unknown.

In a small Michigan town where the business of incarceration is the only thriving industry, the McClusky family are the power brokers between the police, criminals, inmates, prison guards and politicians in a city completely dependent on prisons and the prisoners they contain.

In late 19th-century Turin, the young Lidia Poët, fights against everything and everyone to get what is rightfully hers: to be enrolled in the official register of lawyers. A profession, at the time, reserved exclusively for men. Nevertheless, nothing could stop her dream of becoming the first female lawyer in Italy.

The 1978 kidnapping and assassination of former Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro by Red Brigades terrorists.

Virginia Oldoini, Countess of Castiglione, is an unscrupulous and beautiful woman, in love with Andrea Pieri, a patriot ready to do anything to free Italy from the foreign oppressor. Wounded during a chase, Pieri takes refuge in the castle of Virginia, which, with the approval of her husband, Count Francesco Verasis of Castiglione, takes care of him. Meanwhile, Nigra, in charge of the affairs of the Kingdom of Piedmont in Paris, discovers the relations of the countess with the subversives and sees in her the perfect tool to bring Napoleon closer to the Italian cause.

Forty years after, through the eyes of those directly involved, this powerful series explores the bitterly divisive strike that wounded the soul of the nation