Workingman's Death

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Movie
Original title Workingman's Death
Country of production Germany , Austria
Publishing year 2005
length 126 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Michael Glawogger
script Michael Glawogger
production Pepe Danquart ,
Mirjam Quinte ,
Erich Lackner
music John anger
camera Wolfgang Thaler
cut Monika Willi ,
Ilse Buchelt

Workingman's Death is a documentary film by Michael Glawogger from 2005. It shows five examples of hard physical labor under extreme conditions in different parts of the world.

content

The film is divided into five episodes set in Ukraine, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan and China, and several different languages ​​are spoken: Pashto , Yoruba , German, English, Igbo , Bahasa Indonesia , Mandarin and Russian.

The first episode, entitled “Heroes”, shows non-industrial coal miners in the eastern Ukrainian Donbass coalfield at work as well as brief insights into their family environment. You also get to see a wedding. At this, the monument to the famous miner Alexei Stachanow is honored with bouquets of flowers.

In the second episode, "Ghosts", the film goes to Indonesia, where workers mine sulfur from the still active volcano Ijen in the east of Java Island and drag the heavy load along mountain passes populated by tourists.

In the third episode, "Lions", you get to see an open-air slaughterhouse in the Nigerian port city of Port Harcourt . This episode offers a glimpse into a world of bloody crafts and poisonous smoke.

The fourth episode shows welders who, far from their families, dismantle huge decommissioned cargo ships from all over the world near Gadani in Pakistan. The title “Brothers” refers to the solidarity relationship that develops between men in their life-threatening work.

"Future" is the title of the final episode that shows steel workers doing their sweaty work in the northeast Chinese heavy industrial region of Liaoning . Workers express satisfaction with their work and are optimistic about the future of the emerging People's Republic of China. In contrast to this, Chinese young people are interviewed who think an old hero monument is funny and anachronistic.

The film closes with a contrasting epilogue in Duisburg, where a former steelworks is shown, from which the workers have already disappeared and which has now been transformed into an amusement park populated by young people .

Awards (selection)

The camera work in these very different locations was extremely demanding and demanding. For this masterpiece, among other things, Wolfgang Thaler received the Marburg Camera Prize in 2009 .

Web links

literature

  • Henry Keazor: "Tradition and Contrast: Industrial Cities and Industrial Work in the Documentaries of Michael Glawogger: From` Megacities´ (1998) to `Working Man's Death´ (2005)", in: Industrial Cities. History and Future, ed. by Clemens Zimmermann, Frankfurt am Main 2013, pp. 345–361.