A working-class family in London’s East End is struggling to stay afloat during the recession under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s premiership. Only the mother Mavis is working; father Frank and the couple’s two sons Colin, a timid, chronically shy individual and Mark, an outspoken, headstrong young man, are on the dole. This situation is contrasted by the presence of Mavis’s sister Barbara, and her husband John, whose financial and social loftiness appears to be a comfortable facade over the unspoken soreness of a lackluster marriage.
Tag: working class
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My Beautiful Laundrette
A young Pakistani Briton manages a rundown laundrette with his lover while dealing with tension in his family, the local Pakistani community, and a persistent mob of skinheads.
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Shadows
The life of an ordinary working class family in Bagnolet’s block of council flats, Paris’ suburb. “I’ve spent 17 years here. I sacrificed myself for you. Now it’s over. ” says the mother, who dreams of being a singer. Between a pre-teen rocker brother and a disillusioned father, daughter Nathalie brings balance into this breaking-down family.
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Working Class
Yam, Sunny and Ah Hing are buddies and all dismissed creating havoc in their jobs. The trio is employed by a noodle factory, which has a very poor labor relationship. The manager, supervisor and foreman are always picking on their subordinates. Finally the workers decide to take an united front to oppose their superiors.
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Radio Days
The Narrator tells us how the radio influenced his childhood in the days before TV. In the New York City of the late 1930s to the New Year’s Eve 1944, this coming-of-age tale mixes the narrator’s experiences with contemporary anecdotes and urban legends of the radio stars.
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Life Is Sweet
Just north of London live Wendy, Andy, and their twenty-something twins, Natalie and Nicola. Wendy clerks in a shop, Andy is a cook who forever puts off home remodeling projects, Natalie is a plumber and Nicola is jobless. This film is about how they interact and play out family, conflict and love.
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Land and Freedom
David Carr is a British Communist who is unemployed. In 1936, when the Spanish Civil War begins, he decides to fight for the Republican side, a coalition of liberals, communists and anarchists, so he joins the POUM militia and witnesses firsthand the betrayal of the Spanish revolution by Stalin’s followers and Moscow’s orders.