The 2020 DC Labor FilmFest continues our weekly series with "Space Jam," where the first union joke appears after the aliens arrive in Looney Tune Land, when a worried Porky Pig convenes an “emergency cartoon character union meeting.” Tune in Tuesday night from the safety and comfort of your own home; see below for details, plus upcoming screenings and registration links!
- Chris Garlock, Director, DC LaborFest

Film
Space Jam (1996)
Tue, April 28, 7pm; online via Zoom 
FREE; register here
Introduced by journalist Steven Perlberg; post-screening Q&A with Tom Zaniello, author of Working Stiffs, Union Maids, Reds, and Riffraff: An Expanded Guide to Films about Labor

The central story of the 1996 film Space Jam is well-known: Michael Jordan links up with the Looney Tunes for a high-stakes game of basketball against a team of alien slavers armed with the stolen talent of five NBA stars. Less well-known is that the movie contains barely hidden pro-union messages. In The Hidden Pro-Union Politics Of ‘Space Jam’ Perlberg talks to ‘Space Jam’ writers and animators to find out about the labor-rights messages they hid in plain sight — and why Hollywood wasn’t such a sunny place for the artists who made Bugs Bunny a baller.
PLUS: Looney Tunes classic short "You Ought to Be in Pictures." Daffy convinces Porky to quit his TV job to chase a more lucrative career in feature films.

COMING UP

Tuesday, May 5, 7p: Pride
FREE; register here
Inspired by an extraordinary true story. It's the summer of 1984, Margaret Thatcher is in power and the National Union of Mineworkers is on strike, prompting a London-based group of gay and lesbian activists to raise money to support the strikers' families.
Post-screening Q&A with Jerame Davis, Executive Director, Pride At Work

Tuesday, May 12, 7p: The Moment Was Now
FREE; register here
Set in post-civil war Baltimore in 1869, a turning point in U.S. history “when America almost did the right thing,” says longtime labor organizer Gene Bruskin, who created the musical.
The story reveals the impassioned search for unity among the dynamic leaders of powerful social movements during Reconstruction. The conflicts and possibilities unfold in music and spoken word at a meeting convened by Frederick Douglass. Hope hangs in the balance.
Gene will screen clips from the production and conduct a Q&A.

Tuesday, May 19, 7p: Waging Change
FREE; register here
A compelling look at the unfair employment practices suffered by millions of workers in America's tipped economy. Shines a light on an American struggle hidden in plain sight: the women-led movement to end the federal tipped minimum wage for restaurant workers.