SICK AND TIRED – Kino Caisa: I Don’t Dream of Labour

Overworked, underpaid and sick of it!

I Don’t Dream of Labour explores how capitalism and neoliberalism affect the way we think and conceive of work.

The programme is split into four evenings of short films which all consider different aspects of capitalism’s human toll.

`Sick and Tired ’ is the second evening of the ‘I Don’t Dream of Labour’-film programme. The programme explores our relationship to work, capitalism and power through screenings of short- to mid-length films.

Women at work perform a double shift: they often finish their day job only to arrive home and carry out their second one – that of care labour in the home. Through film, we look at the work of fed up feminists across the globe in the 1980s speaking out and organising against their exploitation.

Most of the included films also connect diverse legacies of film-making by feminist collectives. A wave of collectives bloomed between the 1960s and 1990s who picked up cameras as a consciousness-raising tool. The female-led groups pooled resources for total creative control and made films on gendered issues such as reproductive freedom, working conditions, domestic labour and sexual violence. Some of those films are included here as a snapshot into their creative work and dreams for better.

TRABALHADORAS METALÚRGICAS / Olga Futemma and Renato Tapajós, 1978 Brazil. 17 mins.
In the late seventies, a group of Brazilian documentary filmmakers traveled to the ABC region in the suburbs of São Paulo with the purpose of recording a wave of worker strikes taking place in response to the automotive industry. Documenting striking women metal workers, Olga Futemma and Renato Tapajós’ Trabalhadoras Metalúrgicas is a particularly vigorous work. Scenes filmed during the first Congress of Metallurgical Women of São Bernardo and Diadema in 1978 are intercut with images documenting the appalling working conditions against which the women featured in the congress were striking.

ALL STRESSED UP / Leeds Animation Workshop, 1985 UK. 12 mins.
The Leeds Animation Workshop was Britain’s first all-female led animation collective. The Workshop began in 1978 and is still active, working from the Harehills area of Leeds. All Stressed Up examines women’s high risk for work-related stress. They have to deal with a wide range of problems including bad management, job design, sexual harassment and the pressure of their ‘dual role’.

AND WHAT DOES YOUR MOTHER DO? / Cine Mujer, Colombia 1981. 8 mins.
A snappy and politically potent work from the Colombian feminist film collective Cine-Mujer exposing women’s invisible labor in the home. From 1978 to the late 1990s, Cine Mujer produced several short films, documentaries, series and videos, and acted as a distribution company of Latin American women’s cinema.

MOLKARIN (MAID SERVANT) / Yugantar, India 1981. 25 mins.
Yugantar, India’s first feminist film collective, was founded in Bangalore by friends and filmmakers Abha Bhaiya, Navroze Contractor, Deepa Dhanraj, and Meera Rao. Their first film Molkarin exposes the oppressive working conditions of thousands of domestic workers in Pune. Through re-enactments of significant moments of the original process of unionising, the film narrates the coming together of women workers and union activists to form the Pune Shahar Molkarin Sanghatana (Pune City Domestic Workers Union) to fight for their rights.

All films include English subtitles.

The programme is curated and introduced by Adalmiina Erkkola, a cultural producer interested in the political potential of film. They also host the No Man’s Land radio show at IDA Helsinki.