Union
Guests Expected
Director Stephen Maing and Producer Samantha Curley are expected to attend.
Description
Among other dubious business practices, Amazon is notorious for being anti-union. Some brave workers in various locations are taking organizing matters into their own hands however, and this rousing and immersive documentary takes a deep dive into the efforts of one such group in Staten Island. Dismayed over the inadequate provisions of PPE equipment for workers, a charismatic aspiring rapper named Chris Smalls walks off the job, forms a group called the Amazon Labor Union (ALU), and convinces others to join via motivating speeches and offers of free marijuana. In order to bring the matter to a vote, ALU needs to get 30% of the workforce signed on amid predatory anti-organizing tactics by their bosses, and directors Story and Maing depict the ALU’s ups and downs with a bird’s-eye view as the group strives to reach the magic number.
—Rod Armstrong
Brett Story is an award-winning filmmaker and writer based in Toronto. Her films have screened in theaters and festivals internationally, including at CPH-DOX, SXSW, True/False, and Sheffield Doc/Fest. She is the director of the award-winning films The Prison in Twelve Landscapes (2016) and The Hottest August (2019), and author of the book Prison Land: Mapping Carceral Power Across Neoliberal America (2019). Brett has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Sundance Institute, and was named one of Variety’s 10 Documentary Filmmakers to Watch. She holds a PhD in geography and is currently an assistant professor of Media Praxis at the University of Toronto.
Stephen Maing is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker and cinematographer based in New York City. His feature documentary Crime + Punishment which he also filmed and edited won a 2018 Sundance Special Jury Award, an Emmy Award for Outstanding Social Issue Documentary, and was shortlisted for the Academy Award for Best Documentary. His film Dirty Gold (2020), featured in Netflix’s Dirty Money series, immersively reveals US involvement in the illicit mining and trading of gold and was filmed on location in Peru’s Amazon rain forest and Miami, Florida.
Film Details
Language English
Year 2023
Runtime 104
Country USA
Director Brett Story, Stephen Maing
Executive Producer Jenny Raskin, Lauren Haber, Geralyn White Dreyfous, The Villa Family, David Levine, Jessica Grimshaw, Nick Shumaker, Dawn Olmstead
Producer Brett Story, Stephen Maing, Samantha Curley, Mars Verrone, Martin Dicicco
Editor Blair Mclendon, Malika Zouhali-worrall, Stephen Maing
Cinematographer Martin Dicicco, Stephen Maing
Print Source The Film Collaborative
Closed Captions Closed Captions are confirmed for this film
Audio Description Audio Descriptions are confirmed for this film
American Sign Language (ASL) Interpretation American Sign Language Interpretation is not currently scheduled for this film
