Bread and Roses
Synopsis
The two sisters have a deep but fiery relationship which is further stretched by Sam, a talented and anarchistic American activist, who is part of a dynamic campaign opposed to older methods of trade union organising. They have a simple motto, 'No Justice, No Peace' and embark on a peaceful but highly imaginative guerrilla campaign for trade union recognition against cleaning companies and powerful corporate owners of the tower blocks.
Ken Loach's first US-set film exposes a side of Los Angeles that to date has been swept under the corporate carpet.
Written by Paul Laverty, Bread And Roses is set around the early 1990s Justice for Janitors strike which saw an army of exploited cleaners - the invisible Latino immigrants - take to the streets to protest for basic workers' rights. The film stars Pilar Padilla and Elpidia Carrillo as the two sisters involved in the struggle and Adrien Brody as a union activist who leads the campaign against their employers.
For Loach, the appeal was that "the film was set in another world that existed side by side with the movie world. It's about organising immigrant workers, (who are) very vulnerable and easily exploited. Having worked on a film in Nicaragua (Carla's Song), this seemed another element in the same wider story, the relationship between the US and countries that are essentially its colonies, economically and culturally."
The film was shot according to Loach's pared-down aesthetics, with a high shooting ratio that allowed the director to let the dialogue run on until he had what he needed. Making the film in the US with a significant number of extras meant the budget, at $5.5m, was higher than usual. It also meant Loach had to occasionally break the rules "which is always quite entertaining", he says.
Details
- Year
- 2000
- Type of film
- Features
- Running time
- TBC
- Format
- 35mm Kodak
- Director
-
Ken Loach
- Producer
- Ulrich Felsberg
- Executive Producer
- Ulrich Felsberg
- Editor
- Jonathan Morris
- Screenwriter
- Paul Laverty
- Director of Photography
- Barry Ackroyd
- Sound
- Ray Beckett
- Composer
- George Fenton
- Principal cast
- Pilar Padilla, Adrien Brody, Elidia Carillo
Genre
Categories
Production Status
Production Company
Parallax (Bread and Roses) Ltd
7 Denmark StreetLondon WC2H 8LS
UK
T 020 7836 1478
Sales Company
The Works
4 Great Portland StreetLondon
W1W 8QJ
UK
T 020 7612 1080
salesco@btinternet.com
Page updates
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See also
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I, Daniel Blake
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Year: 2016
Daniel Blake has worked as a joiner most of his life in Newcastle. Now, he needs help from the State for the first time in his life.<br /> He crosses paths with a single mother, Katie, and her two young children, Daisy and Dylan. Katie’s only chance to escape a one-roomed homeless hostel in London has been to accept a flat in a city she doesn’t know, some 300 miles away.<br /> Daniel and Katie find themselves in no-man’s land, caught on the barbed wire of welfare bureaucracy as played out against the rhetoric of ‘striver and skiver’ in modern day Britain.<br /> Official Selection Toronto International Film Festival 2016 - Special Presentations<br /> Winner - Palme d’Or, Cannes Film Festival 2016