Labor & Employment Law

In its 10th Year, DC Labor FilmFest Opens Friday

By Mike Hall

The 10th annual DC Labor FilmFest kicks off Friday night at the American Film Institute in Silver Spring Md., with the French black comedy Lousie-Michel featuring workers at suddenly shuttered toy factory who decide to seek the ultimate revenge.

The FilmFest runs through Oct. 19 and includes the Washington, D.C., area premier of Fair Game, starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn in the story of outed CIA operative Valerie Plame. Plame’s undercover CIA role was revealed in a Robert Novak column (thanks to a leak from the White House) after her husband, former U.S. ambassador Joe Wilson, published an op-ed piece critical of the Bush administration’s weapons of mass destruction intelligence in Iraq.

Click here to purchase tickets?union members get a discount when they show their union card at the box office?and here for detailed look at the line-up.

Chris Garlock, founder and director of the FilmFest presented by the DC Metro Labor Council, says the rest of the line up includes:

• OFFICE SPACE?A perennial and outrageously funny DC Labor FilmFest favorite. The FilmFest once again will feature a raffle of OFFICE SPACE paraphernalia, including Milton’s precious red Swingline stapler.
• THE INFORMANT! (Whistleblower Series)–This darkly comic film from Steven Soderbergh stars Matt Damon as real-life whistleblower Mark Whitacre, who exposed the lysine price-fixing conspiracy of the mid-1990s, which led to the first successful prosecution of an international cartel by the U.S. Department of Justice in more than 40 years.
• FAST FOOD NATION: Indie filmmaker Richard Linklater takes a dramatic approach to examining the fast food industry’s health risks and environmental and social consequences.
• OUTSOURCED: Perhaps the only romantic comedy about outsourcing: Telemarketer Todd (Josh Hamilton) sells cheap novelty products over the phone from Seattle until he and his entire Order Fulfillment department are outsourced to India.
• GIGANTE: a supermarket security guard in a Montevideo suburb passes the time working the graveyard shift by watching videos, listening to music, doing crossword puzzles and watching Julia, a young cleaning woman, on the security camera monitors.
• THE MAID: After 23 years working as housemaid in an upper class Santiago household, Raquel (Catalina Saavedra) is as much a part of the Valdez family as the wife, husband and kids she lives with and looks after. But the years of servitude have taken the toll on her; a deeply emotionally satisfying glimpse into the lives of those who are seen but never heard.

Full post as published by AFL-CIO NOW BLOG on October 13, 2010 (boomark / email).