Following two sold-out screenings at the Watsonville Film Festival, an encore showing of the 1989 documentary Watsonville On Strike, about the Watsonville Cannery Strike of the 1980s, is set for April 30 at 7pm at the Del Mar Theater in Santa Cruz. The screening, which includes the newly released short film Daughters of the Strike, is part of the Reel Work May Day Labor Film Festival.
Watsonville on Strike delves into one of the most significant struggles for economic and social justice in the history of Santa Cruz County. Following the screenings, filmmaker Jon Silver of Migrant Media Productions will be joined by several former strikers, along with Daughters of the Strike co-stars Blanca Baltazar-Sabbah and Wendy Baltazar, for a Q&A session facilitated by Consuelo Alba, Watsonville Film Festival executive director.
The Reel Work festival continues with a screening May 1 at 10am at Cal State University Monterey Bay of The Pickers, a 2024 German documentary about European migrant workers.
Closer to home—at the SEIU Union Hall, 517 Mission St., Santa Cruz—there will be three nights of screenings on May 2, May 7 and May 9 of various films that focus on recent actions by workers. All three are hybrid events that begin at 7pm and can also be viewed on Zoom.
On May 10 at 4pm, the film American Agitators—which focuses on the achievements of labor organizer Fred Ross Sr.—will screen at the Resource Center for Nonviolence, 612 Ocean St., Santa Cruz. It will be followed at 7pm by a showing of Delano Manongs, which tells the story of Larry Itliong and the Filipino farmworkers who helped start the United Farm Workers.
Other films are scheduled through May 19. The festival is centered around May Day, which will be marked locally by an International Workers Day of Action Rally at 5pm on May 1 at Ocean Street and Dakota Avenue, followed at 6pm by May Day Singing for Justice, Peace & Freedom at the Resource Center for Nonviolence.
Admission is free. For details, visit reelwork.org.
