The Killing Floor Film Movement

The screenplay by obie award winner leslie lee based on an original story by producer elsa rassbach traces the racial and class conflicts seething in the city s giant slaughterhouses and the brutal efforts of management to divide the workforce along ethnic lines which eventually boiled over in the chicago race riot of 1919.

The killing floor film movement.

Rassbach envisioned duke s film as the first entry in a 10 part program dramatizing the history of labor organizing and relations in the united states. Plaza cinema presents the killing floor film movement plus plaza cinema presents the killing floor praised by the village voice as the most clear eyed account of union organizing on film the killing floor tells the little known true story of the struggle to build an interracial labor union in the chicago stockyards. The 4k digital restoration of the killing floor 1984 is now available from the distributor film movement classics. The screenplay by obie award winner leslie lee based on an original story by producer elsa rassbach traces the racial and class conflicts seething in the city s giant slaughterhouses and the brutal efforts of management to divide the workforce along ethnic lines which eventually boiled over into the chicago race riot of 1919.

This 1985 sundance award winning film speaks deeply to the present moment exploring a true story of the struggle of black and white workers over a hundred years ago to build a strong interracial union in the giant chicago slaughterhouses in the face of the mounting racism that erupted in violence in the chicago race riot of 1919. Image from the killing floor courtesy film movement the film s road to production is a story of its own almost equally rich with implication.