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May Day Labor Film Festival

• SPEAKERS & FILMMAKERS • 2005

PAUL ORTIZ is Assistant Professor in the Department of Community Studies at UC Santa Cruz where he teaches courses on comparative social movements, the African Diaspora, and the history of democracy. He is a member of the UCSC Faculty Association and the American Federation of Teachers. His work in the labor movement began when he walked the picket line with the Greyhound bus drivers in their 1990 strike. He served as a volunteer boycott organizer with the United Farm Workers of Washington State during their boycott of Chateau Ste. Michelle Wines which led to the first-ever union contract for Washington farm workers in 1995. Paul is co-author of Remembering Jim Crow: African Americans Tell About Life in the Jim Crow South.

SAUL LANDAU, an internationally-known scholar, author, commentator, and filmmaker, is the Director of Digital Media Programs at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. He is known for his work on foreign and domestic policy issues, Native American and South American cultures, and science and technology. Landau's most widely praised achievements are the over forty films he has produced on social, political, historical, and human rights issues, for which he has won numerous awards including the Letelier-Moffitt Human Rights Award. He received an Edgar Allen Poe Award for Assassination on Embassy Row, a report on the 1976 murders of Chilean Ambassador Orlando Letelier and his colleague, Ronni Moffitt.

DAVID REDMON has a Ph.D. in sociology and cultural studies. His area of specialization is visual studies. His next documentary film explores the concept of intimacy from the perspective of a young woman who makes bras for Victoria's Secret in Reynosa, Mexico.

JASMINA BOJIC, film critic and Stanford lecturer in the Humanities, founded the first-ever international documentary film festival in 1998 at Stanford University in conjunction with the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The United Nations Association Film Festival offers a unique opportunity to view films that are rarely screened for public audiences since they are too political for commercial theatrical release. These films allow viewers to become familiar with global problems and gain a better understanding of the means to address these problems. Encouraged by overwhelming positive response from the audience and the media, UNAFF created a travelling film festival in 1999, which replicates the original festival in many of the 175 UNA chapters around the country. Bojic is Festival Director of UNAFF and the UNAFF Traveling Film Festival.

PHARIS HARVEY, a retired United Methodist minister, was the executive director of the International Labor Rights Fund and a founding board member of the Global March Against Child Labor, which has involved trade unions and civic organizations in over a hundred countries in a global effort since 1998 to secure enactment and enforcement of international law to eliminate child labor abuse. In 1998, the ILRF initiated a film project to portray the global problem of abusive child labor and the heroic efforts being made to liberate the 246 million children suffering from this abuse. The resulting feature-length film, Stolen Childhoods was completed in 2004 after filming in seven countries and interviewing hundreds of working children, officials and activists. Pharis continues to work with Galen Films and Romano Productions as the Senior Program Consultant for the film.

SABINA GONZALEZ is completing her Community Studies and Film majors at UC Santa Cruz. In school, she was active in student government and helped run a campaign to improve access to the university by underrepresented students. Working with campus labor unions, she helped coordinate a campaign to dump the university's out-sourced dining services provider, Sodexho Inc., which successfully converted the cafeteria workers into unionized university employees.

LEILANI MONTES, a double major in Film and Community Studies, is a fourth year student at UC Santa Cruz. With an interest in cultural and political organizing, Leilani has lead several projects such as an Anti-CAFTA forum, Guatemala Youth Resistance Tour, co-directed CineMaiz Film Festival in coalition with M.E.Ch.A and Centro Americano Unidos. She recently completed her 6-month field study in New York, where she interned for Michael Moore's documentary, Fahrenheit 9/11. Leilani plans to continue to work for social justice behind the independent lens.

VICTORIA FONG, a senior at the University of California, Santa Cruz, is majoring in Community Studies with an emphasis in Social Documentation. Victoria began her interest in advocating for localized and investigative media after working as Station Manager for Student Cable Television at UCSC, one of few student-run cable television stations in the nation. Victoria's documentary work has ranged from highlighting the importance of youth and art to a piece on the developing Multiracial Movement. Victoria plans to continue exploring the possibilities for social change through documentaries and films.

RAINBOW THEATER productions are designed to increase awareness of the cultural climate at UCSC and in the City of Santa Cruz. The group's artistic purpose is to create unity, increase visibility and understanding of various ethnic groups, and encourage the celebration of American ethnic diversity and culture.

CASEY PEEK is a documentary filmmaker in the San Francisco Bay area. He has produced and edited several programs, including New World Border, a documentary on US/Mexico border militarization, Trade Secrets: The Hidden Costs of the FTAA, Eyes on the Fries: Young Workers in the Service Economy and Hidden Internment: The Art Shibayama Story, a documentary on the internment of Japanese Latin Americans in U.S. Department of Justice Camps during WWII. With 9 years of experience in the Bay area, Peek has worked closely with organizations, such as the Chinese Progressive Association, the UC Berkeley Labor Center, the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and the Japanese Latin American Campaign for Justice. In addition to production, Peek also founded Progressive Films a local company that distributes films and videos which offer a progressive perspective, promote human rights and are created to advance social justice, multiracial equality and cross cultural understanding.

PAUL BUHLE is a preeminent scholar of labor history. His activism in social movements beginning with civil rights in his hometown of Champaign, Illinois, in 1960 has guided his research activity, which includes editing and publishing journals on the history of radical movements and the progressive potential of popular culture. At present he writes columns for TIKKUN and Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, and contributes to a wide variety of other publications including The Nation, New Labor Forum, and The Oral History Review.

ARCHIE GREEN is retired as a professor of English and folklore at the University of Texas. The acknowledged dean of laborlore, Green listens to American workers and relates their yarns, tales, and stories to readers with care, skill, and sympathy. His books include Wobblies, Pile Butts, and Other Heroes and Calf's Head and Union Tale: Labor Yarns at Work and Play.

ANNE FISCHEL is a documentary filmmaker and a member of the faculty at the Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. She teaches filmmaking and media studies. Her films include: Misa Colombiana, about organizing in a shantytown in Medellin, Colombia; I Don't Have to Hide, a portrait of women struggling with eating disorders; and Thanksgiving Day, an autobiographical film about her extended family.

DANA FRANK is Professor of American Studies at UC Santa Cruz. She is the author of Three Strikes with Howard Zinn and Robin D. G. Kelley, Buy American: The Untold Story of Economic Nationalism, and Purchasing Power. She is a member of AFT Local 2199, the National Writers Union, and the UCSC Faculty Association, and has long been active in labor solidarity work.

CECILIA SAINZ is a journalist by training, and her work over the last few years has focused on the recovered factory movement and other responses to the financial crisis of 2001. She was a lead field analyst for The Take with Avi Lewis and Naomi Klein. She has visited dozens of recovered, cooperative factories, interviewed countless workers, and fought for the success of the workers in efforts ranging from analyzing business plans to making Molotov cocktails. She is currently a member of The Working World which seeks to sustain the cooperative movement in Argentina. Ceclia is very familiar both with the world abroad and the very local struggles in Buenos Aires, and her keen perceptions provide fascinating insight into the life and struggle of workers in Argentina.

ERNESTO "LALO" PARET grew up in one of most infamous slums outside of Buenos Aires. Following the example of his mother, Lalo soon became a local leader, helping not only to fight for the rights of his community but also to organize its members into practical economic groups. After the financial crisis of 2001, Lalo became a key member of the Movement of Recovered Factories and was the organizer of countless factory take-overs and their subsequent transformation into successful businesses. Lalo quickly became a trusted source for The Take, and he can be seen on film organizing the Forja factory with the words "Occupy, resist, and produce." He is currently a member of The Working World which seeks to sustain the cooperative movement in Argentina.

KAZUMI TORII is an artist and a videographer who edits and directs labor TV productions. She is presently working on the documentary "Rebuilding San Francsico" the story of the workers who rebuilt San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake.

STEVE ZELTZER has been producing labor videos since 1983 including a long running labor TV show called "Labor On the Job". He is a founder of LaborNet and Labortech. He also helps curate the International Working Class Film and Video Festival which is held during July in San Francsico LaborFest. He was also in Argentina last year and helped support the first Latin American Working Class Film and Video Festival.

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