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Pick of the Indies
WITH the current strike on Hollywood film studios as writers demand a share of the cake, it seems timely that the film Salt of the Earth is being screened at the start of December.
The film was made in 1954 by Herbert J Biberman, and was written, directed and produced by members of the original “Hollywood Ten”, who were blacklisted for refusing to go to congressional hearings prompted by Senator Joe McCarthy.
The film is based on the 1950 strike at the Empire Zinc Mine in New Mexico, and looks at the racism faced by Latino workers who were demanding parity with fellow white American workers.
It was considered groundbreaking because it looks at the roles played by the wives of the miners.
It portrays the problems the strikers faced through Roman and Esperanza Quintero, a Mexican-American miner and his wife who find their roles reversed: the women are forced to take on the roles of pickets as the law moves against workers demonstrating, and the men are left at home to do the chores.
The event, organised by the London Socialist Film Co-op, features a discussion led by Hilary Smith, lecturer in film and media studies at Birkbeck College, University of London, who is joined by Joni McDougall, international solidarity officer of general union GMB, and Tom Lannon, chair of London SE Regional Council of the Union of Construction, Allied Trades & Technicians.
December 9, Renoir Cinema, Bloomsbury.
Dan Carrier |
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