Book part:
Claims for Equality, Changes of Use. Workers’ Movements, Film and the Curious Case of Salt of the Earth

Author(s): Schätz, Joachim
Abstract

„Salt of the Earth“ (1954) has become famous as the only blacklisted US film: Written, produced and directed by blacklisted Hollywood professionals intent on committing a “crime to fit the punishment,” it tells of a contemporary struggle of New Mexican zinc miners for better working conditions. Developed in collaboration with many of the participants of the strike, the film sets its convictions in motion: The claim for equality spreads from work relations to race to gender, and it affects dialogue, montage and camera movements. I examine how the cause célèbre that is „Salt of the Earth“ relates to three general threads in the relation between workers’ movements and film: the representation of workers’ movements in films, film as instrument of workers’ movements, and the place of union film cultures in a broader history of special interest film commissioning and screening, including points of contact with corporate films.


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Schätz, Joachim: Claims for Equality, Changes of Use. Workers’ Movements, Film and the Curious Case of Salt of the Earth. In: Mayer, David;Mittag, Jürgen: Interventionen. Soziale und kulturelle Entwicklungen durch Arbeiterbewegungen. Leipzig: Akademische Verlagsanstalt 2013, S. 135-148. DOI: 10.25969/mediarep/4049.
@INCOLLECTION{Schätz2013,
 author = {Schätz, Joachim},
 title = {Claims for Equality, Changes of Use. Workers’ Movements, Film and the Curious Case of Salt of the Earth},
 year = 2013,
 doi = {10.25969/mediarep/4049},
 editor = {Mayer, David and Mittag, Jürgen},
 address = {Leipzig},
 booktitle = {Interventionen. Soziale und kulturelle Entwicklungen durch Arbeiterbewegungen},
 pages = {135--148},
 publisher = {Akademische Verlagsanstalt},
}
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