Ken and I sometimes present 1913 Massacre as a film about “mining’s toxic legacy.” Over the past week or so, that phrase has started to take on new meaning. On Wednesday, August 4th, an EPA crew working with heavy digging machinery to install a drain in the abandoned and flooded Gold King…
A Long Postscript
Ever since Ken and I finished 1913 Massacre, I’ve been watching and learning about the resurgence of mining around Lake Superior. I’ve done some research, talked to some good people, and made a few informal scouting trips to the Lake Superior region, to see if I might perhaps produce a…
Labor Day – Enjoy Responsibly
Have a great Labor Day. And don’t forget what it’s all about.
“They Try to Create Despair Among the Miners”
One of the small treasures I brought back to New York from Lake Superior is Hannu Leppanen and Daniel Schneider’s 2013 letterpress edition of Tyomies, the Finnish workingman’s newspaper published during the strike of 1913. I’ve mentioned the project here before. Daniel set up his Chandler & Price Pilot Press…
First TV Broadcast of 1913 Massacre – Labor Day, 2013
We’re very happy to announce that 1913 Massacre will air on Twin Cities Public Television (tpt) over the 2013 Labor Day holiday. This is the first television broadcast of the film. Showtimes: On tpt Channel 2.1: Monday, September 2nd, at 11:00PM and Tuesday, September 3rd at 5:00AM. On the Minnesota Channel (locally tptMN Channel 2.2): Monday at 12:00am, 6:00AM, 12:00PM, and 6:00PM The online…
Where Is Calumet?
It’s uncanny how this notice from a 1913 newspaper anticipates the opening scene of 1913 Massacre: “Where is Calumet?” That is a simple question, apparently. Almost anybody will say it is a thriving city up in the country where they blow open the earth with dynamite and wrest copper there…
STRIKE!
100 years ago today, the Finnish language newspaper Työmies or The Worker announced: This morning in Michigan’s Copper region, a miner’s strike broke out which, according to information received from various locations up to this point, has stopped work in all of the mines with few exceptions. The strike that began…
Moses Called The First Strike
People from all parts of Europe made their way to Calumet at the end of the nineteenth and the start of the twentieth centuries. The copper-mining town attracted so many immigrants — Germans, Italians, Croatians, Slovenians, Cornish, Irish, Swedes, Norwegians — that it’s sometimes jokingly referred to as “the smelting…
Roy Stafford Reviews 1913 Massacre
Roy Stafford has written a lengthy review of 1913 Massacre — which screened today at the Bradford International Film Festival in the UK — on The Case for Global Film. His thoughtful review touches on a number of themes and questions the film raises, and draws parallels with other films…
It’s 1913 Again In Michigan
I’ve run across a few people drawing connections between the Italian Hall disaster and the school shooting yesterday in Newtown, Connecticut (e.g., here). Maybe listening to Woody’s song helps people register Newtown’s loss, or the horror of Newtown helps us understand a little better what it must have been like…