Mitchell Theatre, Glasgow. 21-23 March 2012

Tickets from www.glasgowconcerthalls.com

Wednesday 21 March, 1.00pm

Films: UCS 1 and UCS: 40th Anniversary

Panel: Ann Guedes, Susan Morrison, Dr Chik Collins. Tickets £5

Thursday 22 March 7.30p

Films: UCS 1 and UCS: 40th Anniversary

Panel: Ann Guedes, Mike Kirby (STUC President), Pat Rafferty (UNITE). Tickets £6

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Friday 23 March 7.30pm

Film: Class Struggle: Film from the Clyde

Panel: Ann Guedes, David Hayman. Tickets £7.50

After each showing the films will be followed by a Q&A with special guest, film-maker, Ann Guedes, plus an invited panel.

Ann Guedes
Independent cinema in Britain is unthinkable without the achievements of the innovative film collective Cinema Action, which was set up in the late 1960s and crystallised around a core of three cultural dynamos: Ann Guedes, Gustav Lamche and Eduardo Guedes.

Ann has made 15 documentary films, many with International Film Festival Awards, Berlin, London, Madrid,
Portugal, Leipzig and the jury prize at the Moscow Film Festival. Her 90-minute feature documentary So That You Can Live was selected for the opening day of Channel 4.

Ann's feature films include:
Rocinante (1986), starring John Hurt and Ian Dury, which won 6 international film awards; Bearskin (1989), starring Tom Waits and Ian Dury; and Talk of Angels (1998).

UCS 1
In 1971 Cinema Action was the only film crew given permission by the Joint Shop Stewards Committee to film the early part of the Work-in. UCS1 contains interviews with UCS workers explaining the rationale behind the Work-in and the strategy deployed by the shop stewards to secure the future of the yards. The film is a unique depiction of how the workers gained support from the wider community and took their fight, quite literally, to the doorstep of the Heath government.
Running time 23mins.

UCS 40th Anniversary
A short film produced for the 40th anniversary celebrations by the STUC's Kevin Buchanan. First shown at the UCS Gala concert on 1 October 2011, the film charts the story of the Work-in using archive footage and images. With a script by John Foster and voice over by David Hayman.
Running time 12mins.

Class Struggle: Film from the Clyde
Halfway through this documentary study of the work-in at Upper Clyde Shipbuilders in 1971, one of the workers says, 'This is a group of workers who are not going to grovel, tugging their forelocks, to the labour exchange'. Such clarity of expression and considered determination to participate in the political process powerfully highlights the fight of workers 'to keep what is in the long term keepable'.

The uniqueness of Class Struggle is about more than Cinema Action being the only group allowed to film inside the yards. The mainstream media news crews seem interested in the yards only as backdrops for interviewing 'key players'. Cinema Action emphasised the action of workers and shop stewards who found running the yards, in one's opinion, "easier than working the double bottom of a ship".
Running time 83mins.