The Higgins Labor Program Film Club — Spring 2021
The pandemic forced us to forego community screenings, so we watched movies on our own and then held Zoom discussions.

• Sorry We Missed You (2019, directed by Ken Loach) — featuring Dr. Ted Barron, Executive Director of the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center
• Roma (2018, directed by Alfonso Cuarón) — This event served as a lead-in to the March 11 virtual talk by Ai-jen Poo, co-founder & Executive Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, “Advancing Visibility, Dignity and Rights for Domestic Workers.”

The Higgins Labor Program Film Club — Fall 2020 — Gender@Work on the American Screen

The pandemic forced us to forego community screenings, so we watched movies on our own and then held Zoom discussions featuring a Notre Dame faculty expert.

• Harriet (2019, directed by Kasi Lemmons) — featuring  Mark A. Sanders, Professor of English and Africana Studies
• The Devil and Miss Jones (1941, directed by Sam Wood) — featuring Emily Remus, Assistant Professor of History
• Norma Rae (1979, directed by Martin Ritt) — featuring Christina Wolbrecht, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy and the Notre Dame Washington Program
• Bread and Roses (2000, directed by Ken Loach) — featuring Jaime Pensado, Associate Professor of History

The Devil and Miss Jones (USA, 1941, directed by Sam Wood) 
Thursday | April 2, 2020 | 8:00 PM | Youtube livestream 
A virtual version of the Higgins Labor Program’s FILM CLASSics series with the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center’s Zoom Back Camera — an ad hoc movie club enabling you to watch a film on your own time and then join a scheduled online discussion to learn more about the film. The discussion is between Ricky Herbt, DPAC cinema programmer, Dan Graff, Director of the Higgins Labor Program, and  Sarah Lyons (ND ’09), Research Analyst for UNITE HERE (Local 1 in Chicago), to provide some perspective on the unprecedented challenges service workers are facing right now as related to this labor film classic. 

Norma Rae (USA, 1979, directed by Martin Ritt)
Sunday | November 3, 2019 | 3:00 PM | Browning Cinema, DeBartolo Performing Arts Center

A special 40th anniversary screening of Hollywood’s feminist labor classic, starring the Oscar-winning Sally Field as a young single mother and textile worker turned unionize organizer.

Cosponsored by the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center, the Gender Studies Program, and the Departments of American Studies and History.

Support the Girls (USA, 2018, directed by Andrew Bujalski)
Sunday | April 28, 2019 | 3:00 PM | Browning Cinema, DeBartolo Performing Arts Center

This film features Regina Hall as the protective manager of a group of employees at a sports bar — and raises timely questions about sexual objectification, working for others, and female solidarity.

Big Night (USA, 1996, directed by Campbell Scott & Stanley Tucci)

Sunday | November 11, 2018 | 3:00 PM | Browning Cinema, DeBartolo Performing Arts Center

Part of the 2018 Chuck Craypo Memorial Series, this poignant comedy-drama follows two immigrant brothers trying to make a go of it with an Italian restaurant in Eisenhower-era America. A great cast featuring Tony Shalhoub, Stanley Tucci, Isabella Rosselini, Minnie Driver, and Ian Holm explores questions of authenticity, assimilation, and longing — for family, community, and great food.

Pride (USA, 2014, directed by Mattew Warchus)
Saturday | October 27, 2018 | 9:30 PM | Browning Cinema, DeBartolo Performing Arts Center
In 1984, an LGBT community group meets in London to discuss their discontentment with the new laws and (de)regulations handed down by the Margaret Thatcher government. Noting similar threats from the Thatcher government to miners, the London LGBT group soon finds itself in the Welsh village of Onllwyn, the ground zero of mining strikes and pit closures. The labor and LGBT communities search for common ground in fighting for equality as some homespun intersectional activism forms.
This screening was part of the 2018 GlobaLGBTQ+ Film Festival, cosponsored by the Higgins Labor Program. 

At the River I Stand (USA, 1993, directed by David Appleby, Allison Graham and Steven Ross)
Sunday | April 22, 2018 | 3:00 PM | Browning Cinema, DeBartolo Performing Arts Center
This powerful documentary explores Martin Luther King’s final campaign, the Memphis sanitation workers’ strike, reminding viewers that the causes of labor rights and civil rights are nearly always intertwined in US history. The Higgins Labor Program’s entry in Notre Dame’s commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of 1968, the screening was cosponsored by the Departments of Africana Studies, American Studies, and History, as well as the North Central Indiana AFL-CIO, Indiana University South Bend’s Civil Rights Heritage Center, and the St. Joseph Valley Project/Jobs With Justice.Nine to Five (USA, 1980, directed by Colin Higgins)
Thursday | February 1, 2018 | 7:00 PM | Browning Cinema, DeBartolo Performing Arts Center

Workplace feminism confronts the patriarchal corporate office in this classic labor comedy starring Jane Fonda, Lily Tomlin, and Dolly Parton.
A panel discussion featuring visiting historian Ryan Murphy followed the screening.The Higgins Labor Program was a sponsor of this entry in the Because Gender Film Series, a collaborative initiative of the Gender Studies Program and the DeBartolo Performing Arts Center.

S​alt of the Earth (USA, 1954, directed by Herbert Biberman)
Sunday | September 17, 2017 | 3:00 PM | Browning Cinema, DeBartolo Performing Arts Center

Released in 1954, this Cold War labor classic provides a fascinating — and more labor-friendly — counterpart to On the Waterfront (the Oscar winner for best picture that year). Recreating an actual 1951 strike by Mexican-American zinc miners, the film is noteworthy on several counts: it was made by a film crew blacklisted by the Hollywood studios, it starred real workers and their families as characters, and it engaged in questions not only about unions and labor rights but gender equality in the household [Watch the original trailer]. Cosponsored by the Institute for Latino Studies and the Gender Studies Program. 

Paterson (USA, 2016, directed by Jim Jarmusch)
Friday | April 28, 2017 | 6:30 PM | Browning Cinema, DeBartolo Performing Arts Center

A slice-of-life about a bus driver and poet in Paterson, New Jersey, starring Michiana’s own Adam Driver. ​

Bicycle Thieves (Italy, 1948, directed by Vittorio de Sica)
Wednesday | February 1, 2017 | 8 PM | Browning Cinema, DeBartolo Performing Arts Center

This tale of a father, a son, a stolen bike, and the difficulty of finding employment in postwar Rome is a quintessential expression of Italian neorealism — and widely considered one of the greatest movies ever made.

Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution (USA, 2015, directed by Stanley Nelson)
Sunday | May 1, 2016 | 2 PM | Browning Cinema, DeBartolo Performing Arts Center

This film is the first feature length documentary to explore the controversial Black Panther Party.

The Organizer  (Italy, 1963, directed by Mario Monicelli)

Wednesday | February 3, 2016 | 8 PM |Browning Cinema, DeBartolo Performing Arts Center

This Italian neorealist 1963 gem — starring the wonderful Marcello Mastrioanni — is by turns comedic and tragic, yet always poignant. The story explores the lives and labors of late nineteenth-century textile factory workers who mount a strike in the wake of a horrific workplace injury. Truly one of the greatest labor films ever made. 

​Two Days, One Night ​(Belgium, 2014, directed by Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne)
Wednesday | May 1, 2015 | 7 PM | Browning Cinema, DeBartolo Performing Arts Center

This Belgian production compels viewers to ask: How far would you go to hold onto your job? Starring an excellent Marion Cotillard.

The Life & Times of Rosie the Riveter (USA, 1980, directed by Connie Field)
Wednesday | September 9, 2015 | 8 PM | Browning Cinema, DeBartolo Performing Arts Center

Connie Fields’s groundbreaking, 65-minute documentary explores the true stories of the American women who broke gender and race barriers by taking good industrial jobs during World War 2, only to be pushed back into lower-paid “women’s work” once the struggle had been won. Pioneering in its use of oral history and feminist perspective, this 1980 masterpiece invites reflection on enduring questions of work-life balance, personal-social responsibility for childcare, and gender equality at the workplace.

​​The Devil and Miss Jones ​(USA, 1941, directed by Sam Wood)
​Wednesday | November 19, 2014 | 7 PM | Browning Cinema, DeBartolo Performing Arts Center

Screwball romance meets labor drama in the greatest workplace and union comedy Hollywood ever made (and likely ever will). Starring the incomparable Jean Arthur and Charles Coburn.