Labor
Often referred to as the first film shown in public, Louis Lumière’s 46 second La Sortie de l'Usine Lumière à Lyon (1895) has been a film which has inspired many other cinematic examinations of labor and the landscapes in which it takes place. Harun Farocki, in his 1995 essay film Workers Leaving the Factory, suggests that the inside of the factory and the conditions of work are never pictured in Hollywood films, despite the overt conception of cinema as entertainment for “the working classes.”
Maquilapolis (City of Factories), a haunting and poetic essay film from the same year as the more widely known Manufactured Landscapes, portrays the living conditions and everyday struggles of factory workers living and working in the Mexican border town of Tijuana, one of the front-lines of labor exploitation arising from NAFTA and globalization in Mexico. In counterpoint to Maquilapolis, we end the program closer to home, with the short Workers Leaving the Googleplex, a video that attempts to represent the secretive labor conditions at the Google Headquarters in Mountainview and which poignantly and meaningfully fails to bring us inside.
