[Peace] AWARE Films event this Sunday, December 12th, 2pm at the Champaign Public Library

[Karen Medina]

[gentle reminder]
Please join AWARE Films for an event this Sunday, December 12th, 2pm
at the Champaign Public Library

AWARE Films proudly presents SALT OF THE EARTH, an outstanding film
made by blacklisted Hollywood producers, directors and actors during
the McCarthy era. In neorealist style the producers and director used
actual miners and their families as actors in the film -- only five
cast members were professional actors.

The 1954 film is based on the real-life 1951 strike against the Empire
Zinc Company in New Mexico. The story centers on a long and difficult
strike led by Mexican-American and Anglo miners. The film shows how
the miners, the company, and the police react during the strike.

The issues the miners strike for include equity in wages with Anglo
workers, and health and safety issues. When the men are forced to end
their picketing by a Taft-Hartley Act injunction, the women step in.

The film was called subversive and blacklisted because it was
sponsored by the International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter
Workers.The film was  denounced by the United States House of
Representatives for its communist sympathies, and the FBI investigated
the film's financing. The American Legion called for a nation-wide
boycott of the film. Also, film-processing labs were told not to work
on Salt of the Earth and unionized projectionists were instructed not
to show it.
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Please join us at 2p on Sunday, December 12th at the Champaign Public Library.
FREE, all are welcome. Refreshments and after-film discussion.
352-2803 for more information.
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The above description was taken from the following sources:
* www.imdb.com/title/tt0047443/
* http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_of_the_Earth [-- You can see what
Noam Chomsky said of the film.]