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https://www.thenerdelement.com/2024/01/27/union-the-sundance-documentary-about-taking-on-amazon/
We all know that Amazon is a trillion-dollar company, with the money and resources to protect its interests at all costs. So how do you portray the daunting task of trying to fight a trillion-dollar company as the little guy? You start with footage of middle class workers waiting in line for public transportation early in the morning. The workers are making the trip to Amazon Warehouse. Now compare it to footage of Jeff Bezos heading into space via a rocket. This could not highlight the difference in realities for these two any better. You now have everyone’s attention. This is exactly how the documentary Union from the Sundance film festival starts out to capture the viewer. Filmmakers Stephen Maing and Brett Story follow The Amazon Labor Union (ALU) lead by a former Amazon worker Chris Smalls as they fight an uphill battle to officially unionize.
Union, catalogs the ups and downs of the ALU at the Amazon JFK8 Fulfillment center in Staten Island from Spring 2021 to April 1, 2022. Chris Smalls is the leader of the ALU movement. A former Amazon employee, Smalls was fired for protesting the lack of PPE available to employees during covid. They were packing PPE up and sending it all over the world in fulfillment but could not obtain it for a safe working environment. He then decided to start the ALU.
The documentary follows the efforts of Chris and several other ALU members to obtain enough signatures to meet the 30% threshold required to file and then initiate a vote. Amazon has a lot of turnover (150% stated in the documentary), so getting 30% of a current workforce was no easy task. We do hear a common employee complaints of being overworked and underpaid as a reason to push for the union. There is also mention of an algorithm that decided who was working the hardest, but we never receive specific details of instances.
Via phone camera footage inside the warehouse we do see some of Amazon’s tactics to combat ALU efforts. HR representatives at orientations focus on the costs each individual person will pay for the union, while implying there would be little benefit. There is mention of union busters getting paid upwards of $2000 a day to persuade people from signing as well as write ups in retaliation.
Union does an excellent job showcasing the struggles endured during the fight to unionize including arrests, arguments and disciplinary action. The ALU is not made out to be the number one authority on everything union. In fact, there are times where it is obvious that they do not completely know what they are doing. Despite their struggles the ALU does not back down. The ALU is creative in its efforts to obtain signatures. From inviting people in with free food to free weed, they use any tools at their disposal to complete their goal.
A great documentary, Union takes you through the David vs Goliath fight the ALU has against Amazon and you can’t help but cheer these workers on.
Credits
- DIRECTOR(S)STEPHEN MAINGBRETT STORY
- PRODUCERSSAMANTHA CURLEYMARS VERRONE
- EXECUTIVE PRODUCERSIMPACT PARTNERSTHE VILLA FAMILYANONYMOUS CONTENT
- CO-EXECUTIVE PRODUCERSBARBARA DOBKINERIC DOBKINPAULA FROEHLESTEVE COHENNATASHA DOLBYDAVID DOLBYMERYL METNIPIERRE HAUSERCHELSEA HALLIGANRYAN PARKERALEXANDER CARPENTERANDREW NEEL
- CINEMATOGRAPHERMARTIN DICICCO
- EDITORSBLAIR MCCLENDONMALIKA ZOUHALI-WORRALL
- COMPOSERROBERT AIKI AUBREY LOWE
- YEAR2023
- CATEGORYFEATURE
- COUNTRYUNITED STATES
- LANGUAGEENGLISH
- RUN TIME102 MIN
- COMPANYLEVEL GROUND PRODUCTIONS
The post Union: The Sundance Documentary About Taking on Amazon appeared first on The Nerd Element.
We all know that Amazon is a trillion-dollar company, with the money and resources to protect its interests at all costs. So how do you portray the daunting task of trying to fight a trillion-dollar company as the little guy? You start with footage of middle class workers waiting in line for public transportation early in the morning. The workers are making the trip to Amazon Warehouse. Now compare it to footage of Jeff Bezos heading into space via a rocket. This could not highlight the difference in realities for these two any better. You now have everyone’s attention. This is exactly how the documentary Union from the Sundance film festival starts out to capture the viewer. Filmmakers Stephen Maing and Brett Story follow The Amazon Labor Union (ALU) lead by a former Amazon worker Chris Smalls as they fight an uphill battle to officially unionize.
Union, catalogs the ups and downs of the ALU at the Amazon JFK8 Fulfillment center in Staten Island from Spring 2021 to April 1, 2022. Chris Smalls is the leader of the ALU movement. A former Amazon employee, Smalls was fired for protesting the lack of PPE available to employees during covid. They were packing PPE up and sending it all over the world in fulfillment but could not obtain it for a safe working environment. He then decided to start the ALU.
The documentary follows the efforts of Chris and several other ALU members to obtain enough signatures to meet the 30% threshold required to file and then initiate a vote. Amazon has a lot of turnover (150% stated in the documentary), so getting 30% of a current workforce was no easy task. We do hear a common employee complaints of being overworked and underpaid as a reason to push for the union. There is also mention of an algorithm that decided who was working the hardest, but we never receive specific details of instances.
Via phone camera footage inside the warehouse we do see some of Amazon’s tactics to combat ALU efforts. HR representatives at orientations focus on the costs each individual person will pay for the union, while implying there would be little benefit. There is mention of union busters getting paid upwards of $2000 a day to persuade people from signing as well as write ups in retaliation.
Union does an excellent job showcasing the struggles endured during the fight to unionize including arrests, arguments and disciplinary action. The ALU is not made out to be the number one authority on everything union. In fact, there are times where it is obvious that they do not completely know what they are doing. Despite their struggles the ALU does not back down. The ALU is creative in its efforts to obtain signatures. From inviting people in with free food to free weed, they use any tools at their disposal to complete their goal.
A great documentary, Union takes you through the David vs Goliath fight the ALU has against Amazon and you can’t help but cheer these workers on.
Credits
- DIRECTOR(S)STEPHEN MAINGBRETT STORY
- PRODUCERSSAMANTHA CURLEYMARS VERRONE
- EXECUTIVE PRODUCERSIMPACT PARTNERSTHE VILLA FAMILYANONYMOUS CONTENT
- CO-EXECUTIVE PRODUCERSBARBARA DOBKINERIC DOBKINPAULA FROEHLESTEVE COHENNATASHA DOLBYDAVID DOLBYMERYL METNIPIERRE HAUSERCHELSEA HALLIGANRYAN PARKERALEXANDER CARPENTERANDREW NEEL
- CINEMATOGRAPHERMARTIN DICICCO
- EDITORSBLAIR MCCLENDONMALIKA ZOUHALI-WORRALL
- COMPOSERROBERT AIKI AUBREY LOWE
- YEAR2023
- CATEGORYFEATURE
- COUNTRYUNITED STATES
- LANGUAGEENGLISH
- RUN TIME102 MIN
- COMPANYLEVEL GROUND PRODUCTIONS
The post Union: The Sundance Documentary About Taking on Amazon appeared first on The Nerd Element.
While Zora Neale Hurston might not be the most well-known figure in the American literary canon, her life was nothing short of tumultuous and, indeed, quite brilliant. Most notable among the aspects we’ll discuss today are her love/hate relationship with Langston Hughes and her work with American novelist Fannie Hurst. However, there are other, less well-known things about this often-overlooked and passed-up American author, who even still to this day hasn’t received her proper flowers.
Hurston was an American author, anthropologist, and filmmaker who often documented racial struggles in the early 1900s, thus becoming a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance. For those who aren’t in the know, the Harlem Renaissance was an intellectual and cultural revival of African American music, dance, art, fashion, literature, and scholarship centered in Harlem, New York City. Dubbed the “New Negro Movement,” after The New Negro anthology edited by Alain Locke, the Harlem Renaissance spanned the 1920s and 1930s and is a notable part of the Roaring Twenties.
Hurston was born in 1891 in Notasulga, Alabama, but moved with her family to Eatonville, Florida, in 1894. As an adult, she often used Eatonville — one of the first all-Black towns incorporated in the US — as a setting in her stories, as it was a place where African Americans could live independently of white society. By the mid-1930s, she had published several short stories, followed by her first three novels, including her best-known work, Their Eyes Were Watching God — which is regarded as her masterwork.
However, these are all well-known facts about Zora Neale Hurston. That’s why we’re about to dive deep into some lesser-known details.
She Was a Multidisciplinary Scholar
Aside from her literary achievements, Hurston was also an accomplished anthropologist. She traveled the American South and the Caribbean, immersing herself in the local customs and cultural practices for her anthropological research. Based on her work, Zora wrote Mules and Men. She also researched lumber camps and commented heavily on white men in positions of power taking Black women as sex partners.
She later traveled to Florida and Georgia to research African American song traditions and their association with slave and African music and later to Haiti and Jamaica, where she drew her research for Tell My Horse. Nora also collected folktales, songs, and anecdotes, particularly those associated with African American and Caribbean cultures, thus significantly contributing to preserving African American heritage.
Her Early Life and Education
Hurston’s mother died in 1904, and her father remarried in 1905, after which Hurston’s father and her stepmother sent her to a Baptist boarding school in Jacksonville, but she was subsequently dismissed after her parents stopped paying her tuition. She resumed her formal education in 1917, attending Morgan College, which was a high school division of Morgan State University. However, she claimed that her birth year was 1901 so that she could qualify for a free high school education, resulting in her graduation in 1918.
She began her studies that very same year at Howard University, a historically Black college. She left Howard in 1924 and was offered a scholarship by a Barnard trustee to Barnard College at Columbia University, where she was the sole Black student. Nonetheless, she received her BA in anthropology in 1928 at the age of 37.
Her Work with Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston became friends while Hurston lived in Harlem in the 1920s. Both of them collaborated with Charlotte Osgood Mason, a white literary patron, and they both moved to Westfield, New Jersey, in the 1930s, where they were actual neighbors. Hughes was another prominent figure of the Harlem Renaissance, whom Hurston collaborated with on a play titled Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life.
The play was a comedy about African American life, and it wasn’t staged at the time, due in large part to a falling out between Hurston and Hughes. This dissolution of friendship was fueled by a copyright issue. It was subsequently staged in 1991, more than 60 years after it was written. Unfortunately, it received negative criticism, with critics saying that the play might’ve been better had Hughes and Hurston finished their collaboration.
She Preserved Folklore
We already mentioned that Hurston was very interested in the oral histories, songs, and tales of African American and Caribbean cultures, but she wasn’t just a mere observer in the field. As mentioned above, she immersed herself in all the communities she studied, often participating in the daily lives and cultural practices of these communities. This immersion granted Hurston a deeper understanding of the oral traditions and practices she was documenting.
The previously mentioned Mules and Men is, quite possibly, Hurston’s most prominent work in folklore, with most of the tales gathered during her research in Florida. The book is sectioned into two: the first section includes folk tales and stories, while the latter deals with the practice of Hoodoo, a spiritual and healing practice in the African American culture.
Posthumous Recognition
During a period of great financial difficulties and failing health, Hurston was forced to enter St. Lucie County Welfare Home, where she had a stroke. Hurston died on January 28, 1960, due to hypertensive heart disease. Following her death, a yardman who had been instructed to clean the house was burning Hurston’s personal belongings when a law officer, Patrick DuVal, stopped the fire and saved the invaluable collection of literary documents containing some of Hurston’s work. Many of these documents subsequently found their way to numerous universities and museums.
Hurston’s work gained significant recognition when the interest in African American and women’s literature was re-sparked in the 1970s. This was mostly thanks to the work of author Alice Walker, who not only sought to bring Hurston’s contributions to literature and anthropology back into public awareness but also sought to identify Hurston’s unmarked grave. Upon finding an unmarked grave, Alice decided to mark it as Hurston’s, inscribing a marker that reads “A Genius of the South.”
Thelma is the feature film debut for writer-director Josh Margolin. TNE watched the film as part of the Sundance Film Festival 2024, you will find our review after the synopsis below.
When 93-year-old Thelma Post (June Squibb) gets duped by a phone scammer pretending to be her grandson, she sets out on a treacherous quest across the city to reclaim what was taken from her.
The film is inspired by Margolin’s grandmother, who was in a similar situation herself. She may be an unlikely action hero, but June Squibb’s Thelma Post certainly ticks all the boxes. Thelma has a nice dose of humor, action, and drama, combined with an excellent cast.
Thelma touches on subjects like ageism and how we infantilize the elderly too much without getting too deep into it. Squibb conveys so much just with her facial expressions that there is no need to slow down the film too much to hammer home the point. June Squibb (Nebraska, About Schmidt) as a leading lady is something that should have happened sooner in her career, but it’s finally happened and she nails it, unsurprisingly. The woman is a treasure and puts in a gem of a performance.
The supporting cast is excellent. Thelma’s grandson Danny, played by Fred Hechinger (The White Lotus, Fear Street) probably gets the most to do. He has a cute relationship with Squibb, I really bought their familial relationship. The late Richard Roundtree (Shaft) is great as Thelma’s friend Ben, acting somewhat as her partner in crime. Their relationship must support a large section of the film and they work off each other beautifully.
Others in the cast include Parker Posey (Lost in Space) as Thelma’s daughter, Clark Gregg (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) as son-in-law Alan, and Malcolm McDowell (A Clockwork Orange). It is an impressive ensemble that all have their moments to impress.
In the film, Thelma is inspired to go after the scammers by Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible. The music and shot choice play into those action movie tropes. Thelma’s version of a stunt may be rolling over a bed, but it feels cinematic and exciting the way that it is portrayed. The filmmaking really supported the tone of Thelma and worked to boost its appeal without overdoing the gimmicks.
Thelma looks beautiful, not just the photography by David Bolen but the production design by Brielle Hubert is strong. The locations are well chosen but the details of the set decorations add to the character of Thelma, especially in her home.
I really enjoyed Thelma and I expect it to secure distribution soon, as it was a hit at Sundance. It’s a cute film, which sometimes gets a little too twee, but for the most part stays on the right side of the line. June Squibb is a star, who knew she could be an action hero as well. The cast really sells the material, but the filmmaking is impressive from a first-time director. I would recommend watching Thelma when it shows up on the big screen or streaming.
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