After the fall of Communism, the plight of the Proletariat is rarely discussed. WORKINGMAN’S DEATH is an unflinching portrait of the state of manual labor in the 21st century. This award-winning documentary reveals the invisible face of workers from around the world. In the Ukraine, a group of men spend long days crawling through cramped shafts of illegal coal mines in order to scrape together enough coal to buy vodka. Sulfur gatherers in Indonesia brave the smoky heat of an active volcano and the treacherous trip back down while Western tourists snap pictures of the stunning landscape. Knee-deep blood, scorching fire and acrid smoke are routine for workers at a crowded open-air slaughterhouse in Nigeria. Pashtun immigrants in Pakistan use little more than their bare hands to dismantle an abandoned oil tanker for scrap metal and live in shanty towns constructed from the scrap. Steelworkers in China fear they could be a dying breed as capitalism erodes the foundation of communist ideology in the world’s fastest growing nation.

Today’s manual laborers are no longer celebrated with hymns of praise. WORKINGMAN’S DEATH provides a rare glimpse into the harsh treatment faced by manual labor around the world.
 

 

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Workingman’s Death Product Information
 
Grade Level: AP, College and University
Subjects: Culture Studies, Sociology, Political Issues
Copyright: © 2005 Lotus-Film / Quinte Film / Arte. All rights reserved.
Set: DVD Only
Total Running Time: 122 minutes
Educational Prices: (includes Public Performance Rights)

 

• College / University: $350.00
  
  
  

 

• Library / High School: $350.00
  
  
  

• Note: If you are unable to pay via PayPal, please contact info@alivemindeducation.com or call us at 212-398-3112 to order this title.

For public exhibition inquiries please contact us for more details!
 

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Reviews

The New York Times - February 24, 2006 - Workingman’s Death
By Stephen Holden

The sardonic epigraph for “Workingman’s Death,” the Austrian filmmaker Michael Glawogger’s glamorized documentary examination of hard physical labor, comes from Faulkner: work is “the reason why man makes himself and everybody else so miserable and unhappy.”

Maybe so. But as Chekhov observed, “Man must toil, he must work in the sweat of his brow, whoever he is, and in this alone is encompassed the sense and the aim of his life, his happiness, his raptures.”

The film seems to want to dispute Faulkner. As it observes laborers from around the world going to hell and back, day after day, year after year, to eke out subsistence livings, you are struck by their exuberance, vitality, teamwork and satisfaction in discharging backbreaking duties with a minimum of complaint. The simple act of doing the work, no matter how dangerous, gives their lives structure and purpose; triumphing over fear adds to their sense of accomplishment.

When you’re totally immersed in the physical moment, there is no room left for ennui. At least that’s the romantic way “Workingman’s Death” likes to imagine hard labor. But tell that to all the oppressed union workers over the decades who have gone on strike for better wages and working conditions.

A film of few words but plenty of indelible images of people (mostly men) risking their lives with hardly a second thought, “Workingman’s Death” hopscotches to various work sites around the world. It is divided into chapters with portentous titles like Heroes, Ghosts, Lions and Brothers that evoke the Herculean labors of Alexsei Stakhanov, a legendary coal miner in the Soviet Union in the mid-1930’s who was mythicized for his superhuman productivity and is remembered at the beginning of the film.

Jumping to the present, “Workingman’s Death” visits Stakhanov’s latter-day descendants extracting what coal remains in the Donbass region of Ukraine, where he toiled 70 years earlier.

Squeezing their bodies into narrow crevices known as mousetraps, many no higher than 16 inches, the miners use chisels and pickaxes to dig coal out of these depleted mines.

After separating coal from rock, they haul their meager spoils out of the pit by hand in small wagons, and divide it up. Most use it to heat their homes. The little bit left over is sold for food. Without the coal, one declares, they would freeze to death.

The film’s next stop is a mine at the edge of a volcanic crater in Kawah Ijen, Indonesia, where the earth spits out molten sulfur in hissing yellow fumes that quickly harden into slabs.

Men toting bamboo baskets balanced on their shoulders descend a perilous mountain path into the infernal mist and return bearing 200-pound loads for the three-mile trek back up the mountainside.

The most disturbing stop on the tour is an outdoor slaughterhouse in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, where goats are killed, skinned, cut into portions, cleaned and roasted.

The camera’s unblinking views of the bleating animals’ throats being slit, sending geysers of blood gushing onto the street, suggest a dispassionate nature documentary in which humans are the alpha species in the natural pecking order.

Next up are the Pakistani workers in the port of Gaddani who have traveled hundreds of miles from their mountain villages to dismember giant ships, using blowtorches to split them apart and sending great hunks of metal crashing into the water. The pieces are cut up and sold as scrap.

Although the work is extremely dangerous, they toil in an atmosphere of calm. What little leisure they have is devoted to saying Islamic prayers and eating food they cook for themselves.

“Workingman’s Death” doesn’t go into detail in any of these scenes. It lets the images (underscored by John Zorn’s industrial music) speak for themselves.

The movie has the structure and tone of an epic historical poem that begins in the past, moves into the present and in two final sequences speculates on the future.

The first, set in a Chinese steelworks in Angang, parallels the optimistic communal spirit there with the exalting of collective labor in the days of Stakhanov.

The second, in Duisburg, Germany, visits a shuttered steelworks that produced more than 30 million of tons of steel from 1903 to 1985. With the blast furnaces turned into an outdoor light show, it is now literally a museum piece.

In the film’s production notes, Mr. Glawogger wonders, “Is heavy manual labor disappearing or is it just becoming invisible?” In this visually impressive but proudly unscientific hymn to progress, the answers are yes and yes.

Written and directed by Michael Glawogger; in Russian, Bahasa Indonesian, English, Ibu, Yoruba, Pashtu and Mandarin, with English subtitles; director of photography, Wolfgang Thaler; edited by Mona Willi and Ilse Buchelt; music by John Zorn; released by Lorber HT Digital. Running time: 122 minutes. This film is not rated.

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Workingman’s Death is a long but engrossing film that presents some of the most horrible working conditions of the forgotten laborer in this century. Accustomed to American labor practices where working conditions are often guided by government regulations or union agreements most of us will be shocked at the plight of the workingman in the far corners of the world.

The film first takes us to the Ukraine where we view people struggling to mine coal in abandoned mines in order to make a living. The dangerous conditions in the mines, the possibility of a cave-in are accepted risks that the laborers take. What is truly amazing is the pride they exhibit in what they are able to accomplish. In Indonesia we see strong young backs carrying loads of sulfur down the mountain, some of these weighing as much as 70 kg. The air is putrefied and the trails are rugged but the money is good while you can do it. Sulfur is a mainstay of the Indonesian economy. The open-air slaughterhouse in Nigeria is difficult to view if you have a weak constitution. All the blood and gore is there but the workers move among the blood and guts making bargains for their prize goats or cattle. In Pakistan we watch as local workers strip a large tanker for as much scrap metal as they can salvage. Without proper tools and without appropriate protection the workers put themselves in jeopardy to skim as much as possible to gain the rewards. In China we see steelworkers working hard as they also strive to stay ahead of the technologies that affect their status. The day of the worker hero is over.

What is most compelling throughout these glimpses is the common theme of survival. People work knowingly under dangerous and gruesome conditions but are able to see value in their job and are thankful for the opportunity. They have a sense of pride in their labor. They survive and have hope for the future even though they know they can’t do this forever. The entire film is subtitled but easy to read.

Recommended for upper level college students or graduate students who are studying human behavior or for an ethics course for business students to get a grasp on international labor conditions. The film is entirely sub-titled and some sections are not easy to view but the message is compelling.

-Educational Media Reviews Online