logologo
MovieVerse© 2024
Privacy PolicyTerms of ServiceContact Us
Made with ❤️ by Thathsara
movie poster
"They Didn't Starve Us Out": Industrial Cape Breton in the 1920s
Sign in to create your own watchlist

"They Didn't Starve Us Out": Industrial Cape Breton in the 1920s

Oct 1, 1991
0h 21m
★ 6.0

Overview

For 200 years, coal mining had been a way of life in Cape Breton. By 1920 things were looking up: miners were unionized and paid decent wages. Then the British Empire Steel Corporation arrived and bought every single steel and coal company in Nova Scotia. BESCO cut wages by a third, setting off a bitter labour dispute. The miners settled in for a long strike. Finally, in 1925, the military ended the unrest with brute force. But the miners, in one sense, had won. They broke up the monopoly and provided an example to workers across the country.

Genres

Documentary
History

Production Companies

ONF | NFB

You may also like

No Image Available
0.0

Beyond Ratings

Feb 29, 2024

Three women share their experience of navigating the app-world in the metro city. The sharings reveal gendered battles as platform workers and the tiresome reality of gig-workers' identities against the absent bosses, masked behind their apps. Filmed in the streets of New Delhi, the protagonists share about their door-to-door gigs, the surveillance at their workplaces and the absence of accountability in the urban landscape.

Matewan
7.4

Matewan

Aug 28, 1987

Filmed in the coal country of West Virginia, "Matewan" celebrates labor organizing in the context of a 1920s work stoppage. Union organizer, Joe Kenehan, a scab named "Few Clothes" Johnson and a sympathetic mayor and police chief heroically fight the power represented by a coal company and Matewan's vested interests so that justice and workers' rights need not take a back seat to squalid working conditions, exploitation and the bottom line.

Salt of the Earth
6.9

Salt of the Earth

Mar 14, 1954

At New Mexico's Empire Zinc mine, Mexican-American workers protest the unsafe work conditions and unequal wages compared to their Anglo counterparts. Ramon Quintero helps organize the strike, but he is shown to be a hypocrite by treating his pregnant wife, Esperanza, with a similar unfairness. When an injunction stops the men from protesting, however, the gender roles are reversed, and women find themselves on the picket lines while the men stay at home.

Solidarność: How Solidarity Changed Europe
7.0

Solidarność: How Solidarity Changed Europe

Oct 1, 2019

Gdańsk, Poland, September 1980. Lech Wałęsa and other Lenin shipyard workers found Solidarność (Solidarity), the first independent trade union behind the Iron Curtain. The long and hard battle to bring down communist dictatorship has begun.

Miners Shot Down
9.0

Miners Shot Down

May 1, 2014

In August 2012, mineworkers in one of South Africa’s biggest platinum mines began a wildcat strike for better wages. Six days later the police used live ammunition to brutally suppress the strike, killing 34 and injuring many more. Using the point of view of the Marikana miners, Miners Shot Down follows the strike from day one, showing the courageous but isolated fight waged by a group of low-paid workers against the combined forces of the mining company Lonmin, the ANC government and their allies in the National Union of Mineworkers.

The Year of the Discovery
6.9

The Year of the Discovery

Nov 13, 2020

In 1992 – 500 years after the beginning of Spain's global empire with the discovery of America – Spain proudly presented itself to the international community as a modern, developed, dynamic country through the Olympic Games in Barcelona and the Expo in Seville. But for filmmaker Luis López Carrasco (1981, Murcia), 1992 was also the year in which the regional parliament building in Cartagena was razed during furious protests against the threatened closure of various local industries. El año del descubrimiento revives this almost forgotten history in a typical Spanish bar in Cartagena, where different generations come together to drink, eat, smoke and talk. Stories from witnesses, demonstrators and strikers from back then and discussions among younger café visitors on themes such as class consciousness, the economic crisis and the role of unions percolate to the surface amidst talk of other life issues.

Stand!
10.0

Stand!

Nov 29, 2019

In post-World War I Winnipeg, a Ukrainian immigrant and a Jewish woman get caught up in a labour strike.

Made in Dagenham
6.7

Made in Dagenham

Oct 1, 2010

A dramatization of the 1968 strike at the Ford Dagenham car plant, where female workers walked out in protest against sexual discrimination.

The Molly Maguires
6.3

The Molly Maguires

Feb 8, 1970

Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, 1876. A secret society of Irish coal miners, bond by a sacred oath, put pressure on the greedy and ruthless company they work for by sabotaging mining facilities in the hope of improving their working conditions and the lives of their families.

Broken Rainbow
5.7

Broken Rainbow

May 5, 1985

Documentary chronicling the government relocation of 10,000 Navajo Indians in Arizona.

Union
0.0

Union

Oct 18, 2024

Up against one of the most powerful companies on the planet, a group of Amazon workers embark on an unprecedented campaign to unionize their warehouse in Staten Island, New York.

Comrades
6.8

Comrades

Aug 23, 1987

The story of "The Tolpuddle Martyrs". A group of 19th century English farm labourers who formed one of the first trade unions and started a campaign to receive fair wages.

Jinsuk & Me
0.0

Jinsuk & Me

Sep 27, 2012

I have been pretty satisfied with my life before I got on the bus. When I do in June 2011, my whole life turns upside down. I am just a regular passenger at first. Like other people I was sorry, and felt obliged to help and care for other passengers. Then I begin to film these common heroes with my camera. Those who speak about hope, who provide it and get on the bus, Ms. Kim Jin-suk, and other crane laborers who risk their safety while demonstrating for their rights on high. She, while stationed insecurely on high, begins interacting with the world through Twitter and makes friends. Then I realize I really love her. Will we have her back safely?

Pit Pony
6.0

Pit Pony

Dec 14, 1997

Glace Bay, Nova Scotia Canada, 1901. Willie MacLean is a 10-year-old boy with a love for horses and liking to school to cape the difficult times his family has. Willie's stern, but benevolent father is a coal miner in a local mine along with his older brother John. But when Willie's father is injured and John is killed in an accident at the mine, Willie is forced to step into his brother's shoes to support his older sister Nelle, and two younger sisters until their father recovers. Willie soon finds work at the mine lonely (aka: the pit) and unfriendly in which he forms a bond with a pit pony horse in order to make it though each day.

American Dream
7.2

American Dream

Oct 6, 1990

When workers at the Hormel meatpacking plant in Austin, Minnesota are asked to take a substantial pay cut in a highly profitable year, the local labor union decides to go on strike and fight for a wage they believe is fair. But as the work stoppage drags on and the strikers face losing everything, friends become enemies, families are divided and the very future of this typical mid American town is threatened.

Harlan County U.S.A.
7.5

Harlan County U.S.A.

Jan 23, 1977

This film documents the coal miners' strike against the Brookside Mine of the Eastover Mining Company in Harlan County, Kentucky in June, 1973. Eastovers refusal to sign a contract (when the miners joined with the United Mine Workers of America) led to the strike, which lasted more than a year and included violent battles between gun-toting company thugs/scabs and the picketing miners and their supportive women-folk. Director Barbara Kopple puts the strike into perspective by giving us some background on the historical plight of the miners and some history of the UMWA. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in partnership with New York Women in Film & Television in 2004.

Signorina Effe
6.6

Signorina Effe

Jan 18, 2008

A white and a blue collar worker fall in love during the 1980 strike at FIAT that marked the end for labor movement in Italy.

The Red and the Black
5.0

The Red and the Black

May 25, 1985

This film is the true story of the creation of Labin Republic in 1921. When Italy annexed Istria, Labin area that is very rich in coal became strategically important for the new government. Domestic Croatian and Slovene population were disappointed by the method of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia of selling foreigners. Accumulated social problems and the growing terror of Italians lead to great miners' strike, led by favorite union leader Ivan Pipan. The strikers will be join young miner Ive Blazina, who as commander of the Red Guard workers struggles for the mining republic and the love of beautiful Mary Brezac. The sudden intervention of the Italian army destroys their dreams, and resigned Pipan surrenders. But not everyone agrees with his behavior.

Rebellion in Patagonia
7.5

Rebellion in Patagonia

Jun 13, 1974

In 1920, workers from Patagonia, in Southern Argentina, gather around an anarcho-syndicalist society and go on strike, demanding better working conditions. When the situation turns unsustainable, President Yrigoyen sends Lieutenant Colonel Zavala to impose order.

No Image Available
7.5

Blood on the Coal

Aug 12, 2015

A story of struggle and tragedy, the film features harrowing underground disasters, heroic rescues and traces a history of strikes, industrial turmoil and the current push by global mining giants to destroy regional communities and replace local mineworkers with a subservient itinerant workforce.

"They Didn't Starve Us Out": Industrial Cape Breton in the 1920s Trailers

No Trailers found.

Cast

Lulu Keating

Narrator (voice)

Lulu Keating