Filmmaker Gary Kaunonen of KCC-TV in International Falls just released a new documentary about a pivotal time in Northern Minnesota’s labor history. It’s called “Northern Minnesota’s Labor Wars.” The years 1916 and 1917 brought major labor uprisings in the mines of the Mesabi Iron Range and the lumber camps of the state’s far northern pine forests. These events not only shaped local history, but became vital turning points in the national and international labor movement.
Pam Brunfelt, Aaron Brown, Saku Pinta, Gary Kaunonen, Jason Scorich, Allyse Freeman, Christopher Welter, Cecelia Wattles-McKeig, Judy Dvorak, Shannon Murray, Robert Walls, Jr., Mike Holden

Starbucks baristas in Buffalo unite against corporate exploitation, sparking a generational uprising among working-class Millennials and Gen Z as they challenge a powerful billionaire CEO and fight for their rights.
2025

A documentary revealing why America's school closures lasted longer than almost any other nation. Framed as a forensic analysis of what happened to children during school closures, it blends director Natalya Murakhver's perspective as a Soviet immigrant with voices of children and families nationwide, exposing devastating learning loss, mental health crises, and inequality.
2025

In their own words, this is the story of six women from the South Wales valleys and how they helped sustain the bitter year-long miners' strike, changing their lives forever.
2024

Shattered Glass: A WNBPA Story dives deep into the lives beyond the court of the next generation of basketball luminaries, Jonquel Jones, Nneka Ogwumike, and Breanna Stewart, as well as WNBA legend, Sheryl Swoopes. From intense off-season routines to the intricacies of family dynamics to navigating the politics of women's sports, this documentary offers viewers a rare, all-encompassing look at the athletes as holistic individuals.
2024

Documentary about the history of the progressive Farmer-Labor movement in Minnesota from 1915 to 1944, when the party merged with the Democrats to form the DFL, the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.
2022

An explosion in one of the largest chemical plants in Europe, the Petrochemical complex in Tarragona, triggers the labour struggle of a group of workers who demand what is fair for everyone.
2021

Gdańsk, Poland, September 1980. Lech Wałęsa and other Lenin shipyard workers found Solidarność (Solidarity), the first independent trade union behind the Iron Curtain. The long and hard battle to bring down communist dictatorship has begun.
2019

The “Prophecy of the 7th Fire” says a “black snake” will bring destruction to the earth. For Winona LaDuke, the “black snake” is oil trains and pipelines. When she learns that Canadian-owned Enbridge plans to route a new pipeline through her tribe’s 1855 Treaty land, she and her community spring into action to save the sacred wild rice lakes and preserve their traditional indigenous way of life. Launching an annual spiritual horse ride along the proposed pipeline route, speaking at community meetings and regulatory hearings. Winona testifies that the pipeline route follows one of historical and present-day trauma. The tribe participates in the pipeline permitting process, asserting their treaty rights to protect their natural resources. LaDuke joins with her tribe and others to demand that the pipelines’ impact on tribal people’s resources be considered in the permitting process.
2017

This documentary film traces the struggle of Indian auto workers of the Maruti Suzuki factory in Manesar, near Delhi, in forming a union. Investigating the underbelly of class conflict and exposing a widespread system of injustice, the film focuses on the repression faced by the workers and their criminal prosecution.
2015

When gang leader Rob Brown is sentenced to prison for a fifth time, he must confront his role in bringing violent drug culture into his beloved American Indian community in northern Minnesota. As Rob reckons with his past, his seventeen-year-old protégé, Kevin, dreams of the future: becoming the most powerful and feared Native gangster on the reservation.
2015

In 2008 French filmmaker Julie Gali traveled to the US to film the election of Barack Obama. In spite of this victory for civil rights, it soon became apparent that the rights of another minority were under threat. In California the passing of Proposition 8 marked the only time in U.S. history that a civil right was actually taken away after it had been granted. Upon seeing this, Ms. Gali decided to immerse herself in the growing grassroots struggle of the gay community, which culminated in the October 11, 2009 March for Equality in Washington DC.
2011
Documentary about the nurses' strike in Finland on autumn 2007.
2008

Paul Wellstone was the charismatic Minnesota progressive who used grassroots organizing to get elected and give ordinary people a stake in government. His 3rd election campaign was cut short when his small plane crashed into the north woods of Minnesota just 11 days before the 2002 election. Wellstone! explores the origin of his politics, his controversial road to the United States Senate, his deep bond with his wife and 'co-senator' Sheila, and the legacy of a life of progressive populism.
2004

Humorist Roy Blount Jr. takes viewers on a journey down the Mississippi River, showcasing everything from areas with spectacularly beautiful scenery to ugly and dangerously polluted stretches bordered by industrial development.
2002

Documentary look at the 1996-97 effort of the dancers and support staff at a San Francisco peep show, The Lusty Lady, to unionize. Angered by arbitrary and race-based wage policies, customers' surreptitious video cameras, and no paid sick days or holidays, the dancers get help from the Service Employees International local and enter protracted bargaining with the union-busting law firm that management hires. We see the women work, sort out their demands, and go through the difficulties of bargaining. The narrator is Julia Query, a dancer and stand-up comedian who is reluctant to tell her mother, a physician who works with prostitutes, that she strips.
2000

Documentary following dockers of Liverpool sacked in a labour dispute and their supporters’ group, Women of the Waterfront, as they receive support from around the world and seek solidarity at the TUC conference.
1996

Through the eyes of a Quebec Jewish activist, Lea Roback, feminist, unionist, pacifist and communist, A VISION IN THE DARKNESS proposes a modernist vision of Quebec history, from the beginning of the twentieth century to the period knows as « La Grande Noirceur », the Great Darkness.
1991

Portrait of a community in the heart of South Wales almost one year into the miners' strike of the 1980s.
1985

This film documents the coal miners' strike against the Brookside Mine of the Eastover Mining Company in Harlan County, Kentucky in June, 1973. Eastover's 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. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with New York Women in Film & Television in 2004.
1977

Stanley Kubrick’s first color film, commissioned by the Seafarers International Union to promote the benefits of union membership. Shot inside the union’s Atlantic and Gulf Coast District facilities, it features scenes of ships, machinery, cafeteria life, and meetings, highlighting the daily routines and camaraderie of seafarers. Thought lost for decades, the film was rediscovered in 1973 and preserved by the Library of Congress.
1953