In Ruth Mader’s feature film Life Guidance (2017), an outsourced agency – uncannily reminiscent of the Austrian Public Employment Service –sorts out all those who cannot or dislike to perform. Only the gods “in heaven”, represented by a well-known piece of the woods above the city of Vienna, it seems, know how to live.
Brizé’s gripping work trilogy—The Measure of a Man (2015), At War (2018), and Another World (2021)—all starring French powerhouse Vincent Lindon, stands as one of the most compelling cinematic explorations of labour markets in today’s capitalism. A discussion about his thought-provoking films in this forum has long been overdue.
In Perfect Days (2023), Wim Wenders achieves the seemingly impossible. With the help of The Tokyo Toilet project and through the depiction of an antihero-hero, he crafts the ethos of a toilet cleaner.
The work of art is to dominate the spectator: the spectator is not to dominate the work of art. The spectator is to be receptive. He is to be the violin on which the master is to play. (Oscar Wilde, The Soul of Man Under Socialism)
The beautiful, angry gig-economy comedy "Do not Expect Too Much from the End of the World" (2023, Radu Jude) doesn't have to look far for exploitative conditions in Bucharest, but finds them en-route in a production assistant's car.
The series 'Blackport' (2021) virtuously works through a piece of Icelandic economic history surrounding the introduction of fishing quotas. Dramatic, amusing and at the same time educational, this microcosm reflects the ills of the wider world.
"Living - once really living" (2022) is the British remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1952 classic "Ikiru". The film addresses a central theme of the working world: taking responsibility. Bill Nighy, perhaps in the role of his life, screenwriter Ishiguro and the film itself have been nominated for several British film awards.
After more than a century, Katharina Gruzei's reinterpretation of the very first film in film history, ‘Workers Leaving the Factory’, shows a grim picture of the world of work and gives food for thought: Has the situation of workers deteriorated so much and what kind of worklife are we even heading towards?
"Night Mail" (1936) was commissioned as an image publicity film by the British General Post Office and went down in film history as a ground-breaking documentary. Directors Harry Watt and Basil Wright succeed in creating an ode to workers and modern technology by enriching their naturalistic style within the film with poetic elements and always keeping the human aspect in mind.
When the eminent film scholar Amos Vogel was forced to flee Vienna to the United States in 1938, the 17-year-old had already made the decision to devote his life to film. One experience that would define his future was a screening of "Night Mail" (1936) and this film still doesn’t fail to impress today.
