By Winnie Baer
As in the past, CCFT is co-sponsoring the Reel Work Film Festival. Among the many events in the area will be a showing of the film CESAR’S LAST FAST, about César Chávez’ protest to end pesticide poisoning of farmworkers and their families, Friday, May 1 (International Workers Day), 7 pm at the Watsonville Center. The guest speaker will be Mark Weller, from Californians For Pesticide Reform, Strawberry Working Group.
As described on the Reel Work website:
The Reel Work May Day Labor Film Festival takes place in California’s central coast communities in and around Santa Cruz each year during the week of May First.
Reel Work presents cultural events, bringing together award-winning documentary film producers, workers, activists, students, and the public with the goal of increasing community awareness of the central role of work in our lives, to discuss economic and global justice issues, and to bring alive the history and culture of the labor movement in the US and abroad. We highlight how workers and community members band together in united effort for mutual benefit to achieve justice and dignity in the streets, fields, and workshops.
Cinematic representations of labor each year include local and international works, world premieres as well as classics. We inspire festival participants to join in the struggle for worker rights locally, nationally and globally to achieve social justice and international solidarity. And in the process we support filmmakers to produce the kind of film we want to screen. (http://www.reelwork.org/aboutus.htm)
For a complete listing of films and events, visit http://www.reelwork.org/schedule.htm
