Coming Soon: 5th Annual Santa Cruz Reel Work Film Festival

The 5th annual Reel Work May Day Labor Film Festival is jam packed this year with sixteen different events starting Thursday April 20, and ending May 1st, International Workers' Day. This year's festival includes the regional premier screening of “Sir! No Sir!” a film about rank-and-file GI resistance to the Vietnam War as well as “Meeting Face to Face,” a film partially funded by Reel Work which depicts the historic nationwide visit of Iraqi labor union leaders to the US in 2005.

Highlights of this years' Reel Work include an activist documentary film workshop led by noted Chicano filmmaker Paul Espinosa. Espinosa will also screen his highly-acclaimed film on the new face of Los Angeles labor, race and politics. Two female miners and union activists from the Mesabi Iron Range of Minnesota will discuss the Academy-Award nominated film "North Country," which will run at the Nickelodeon Theater in downtown Santa Cruz on Sunday, April 23. North Country tells the story of the first successful class action workplace sexual harassment case in the United States.

Reel Work is partnering with the San Jose City College Labor Studies program to bring legendary folk singer Ronnie Gilbert of the Weavers to Santa Cruz to do a portrayal of Mother Jones, “the most dangerous woman in America.” On the same program, we will be hosting members of the locked-out Boilermakers’ Local Union 484 from Meredosia, Illinois who will tell their story which has garnered international attention. David Zeiger will introduce his film Sir! No Sir! on Thursday, April 27 at the Del Mar. Following the screening, two military veterans featured in the film will lead a panel discussion on the past, present, and future of anti-war movements and working people. Noted film maker Renee Tajima-Peña will show and discuss her new film “Labor Women” which depicts the newest generation of union organizers and activists in southern California. Finally, we will feature student-produced films on local labor struggles in Santa Cruz.

From its inception, Reel Work has brought together award-winning documentary film producers/workers/activists/students and the public with the goal of increasing community awareness of the central role of work in our lives, to discuss economic and global justice issues and to bring alive the history and culture of the labor movement in the US and abroad. We aspire to inspire participants to join in the struggle for worker rights locally, nationally and globally and to promote social justice activism and international solidarity.

This year's co-sponsors include the Monterey Bay Labor Council, Community Television of Santa Cruz County, Community Printers, Nickelodeon Theatre, UCSC Community Studies Dept., Film and Digital Media Dept., Feminist Studies Dept., SC County Women's Commission, WILPF, RCNV and many, many local unions. Our venues will be spread throughout the region, from Watsonville to San Jose as well as a month of labor film showings on Santa Cruz Community TV.

Admission to the film showings will continue to be by voluntary donation. Publicity stills, bios and interviews with the principle speakers and film producers are available. For a full schedule, updates, and a partial list of sponsors go to www.reelwork.org.

As Mother Jones so famously said, "Let's not mourn. Let’s organize!” And let's have some fun while we're doing it.