As a pivotal tool of twentieth- and twenty-first century labor resistance, the strike has long been a vital topic for political cinema, even as it pushes the limits of filmic representation. How might filmmakers capture the unpredictable unfolding of collective resistance when they are often positioned outside the community of striking workers? How does one depict the withholding of labor, which might seem to institute a “dead time” in which “nothing happens”? Examining case studies from Brazil, France, and beyond, this workshop presentation by Sarah Ann Wells (University of Wisconsin-Madison) explores the cinematic construction of strike time as a radical break with the temporality of the working day that opens up new possible futures.

Sponsored by the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts' Interdisciplinary Modernism Workshop.

Please contact rnavitsk@uga.edu for access to the precirculated paper for this workshop. All attendees are welcome.