With These Hands: The Story of an American Furniture Factory

Apr 25, 2009

1h 18m

★ 0.0

Overview

In 2007, unable to compete with cheaper offshore production, Hooker Furniture Co. closed its plant in Martinsville, Virginia, after 83 years in operation. With These Hands follows the last load of wood down the assembly line as it is cut, honed, and assembled into fine furniture. Along the way, employees at the factory share their perspectives on work, community, and survival in a country devastated by de-industrialization and outsourcing.

Genres

Documentary

Production Companies

The Unheard Voices Project

With These Hands: The Story of an American Furniture Factory Trailers

Cast

Himself

Clyde Hooker, Jr.

Himself

Paul Toms

Himself

Lane Nunley

Himself

William Stanley

Herself

Toni Jamieson

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8.0

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A documentary examining the effects of industrial automation on a small American town.

6.6

END:CIV

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7.7

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Jun 9, 2004

A detailed look at the gradual decline of Shenyang’s industrial Tiexi district, an area that was once a vibrant example of China’s socialist economy. But industry is changing, and the factories of Tiexi are closing. Director Wang Bing introduces us to some of the workers affected by the closures, and to their families.

0.0

Shift

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SCHICHT (SHIFT) is both a reckoning and a search for traces of the past. Layer by layer the film unfolds the portrait of the filmmaker's family - brought to life by records from private archives - and embarks on a dizzying trip through the shrinking industrial city of Salzgitter, Germany.

7.2

The Happy Worker - Or How Work Was Sabotaged

May 4, 2022

Our premise is that work has become an act of self-sabotage. Empty corporate jargon, ever-changing management fashions and self-serving bureaucracy masquerading as efficiency hijacked the purpose of work. Creative documentary The Happy Worker will show how we got to this point and the very human behavior that led us here. We want to show how this unhealthy system is maintained and what keeps us from calling bullshit.

7.8

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Sep 15, 2022

When illness forces her away from her beloved trauma cleaning business, Sandra Pankhurst faces up to her traumatic past and begins a search for her birth mother.

0.0

Television

May 9, 1939

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8.0

Enrico Mattei, le rebelle du pétrole

Feb 3, 2026

No overview available.

No Image Available

7.0

Hmoty zítřka

Mar 3, 1961

No overview available.

No Image Available

0.0

The Kitchen

Mar 20, 1987

This documentary follows a group of women on a typical workday as they prepare meals for a dockyard in Rostock. The viewer never learns their names - there are no interviews. The women are presented simply as workers: cooking, cleaning, hauling, and serving dishes amid clanking pots and hot steam.

5.2

Working Women

Jan 1, 1978

Stylized with dramatic interiors and a distorted frame rate, this early documentary miniature from Szulkin depicts six sequences of solitary, repetitious labor.

0.0

Conquest of Light

Jun 7, 1975

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7.2

Passfire

Aug 8, 2016

A film about fireworks, the people who make them and the cultures behind them across the globe.

5.4

Industrial Britain

Dec 31, 1931

Grierson set out to make "propaganda," and this film--with it's voice-over proclaiming the great value of the British industrial worker, without a hint of ambiguity or doubt--fits that category well. The authoritatarian narrator feels out-of-date and unsophisticated, but the footage is well shot and interesting, and the transparency of the propaganda aspect is almost a reflief at a time when so many films have hidden agendas.

0.0

Open files

Jan 1, 1975

A more experimental aproach to labor protection films. In the line of Săucan's style, the soundtrack is as important as the image, the threatening music, full of shrillness, composed by Ion Dumitrescu potentiating the visual construction that mixes - in a montage reminiscent of the Soviet avant-garde school of the 1920s - all kinds of shooting techniques and frame combinations.

7.2

Ferrum

Jan 1, 1963

Unconventional portrayal of mining in the Swedish Lapland ore fields, a powerful image and sound symphony that can be experienced both as a documentary and symbolic work.

0.0

Musician

May 19, 2007

Common sense says you can't make a living in America playing avant-garde improvisational jazz. But Ken Vandermark does it anyway. Among musicians, Vandermark's work ethic is almost mythic. The Chicago reed player has released over 100 albums with nearly 40 ensembles, spends over eight months per year on the road, and lives every other waking moment composing, arranging, performing—and trying to discipline his two hyperactive canines. Though Vandermark was the recipient of a 1999 MacArthur genius grant, he still spends most of his life in smoky clubs and low-budget recording studios, hoping people will plunk down hard-earned cash to hear his wholly non-commercial music. Following the artful cinéma vérité style of the internationally acclaimed Sheriff (Work Series #1), Musician (Work Series #2) forgoes all interviews and voice-overs. It is a fly-on-the-wall time capsule that expertly captures every subtle sound and texture of this most American of art forms.

With These Hands: The Story of an American Furniture Factory

Overview

Genres

Production Companies

With These Hands: The Story of an American Furniture Factory Trailers