National Film Registry Selects Wobblies Documentary

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Wed, 01/12/2022 - 12:03 -- Nick Dager

Each year the Librarian of Congress chooses a select group of films to be inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.  The Registry champions American films and this year the seminal documentary, The Wobblies (1979), which was awarded a New York Women in Film and Television Women’s Film Preservation Fund grant in 2003, has been honored with inclusion to the list. The Wobblies (1979) by Deborah Shaffer and Stewart Bird is in outstanding company with others named to the Registry such as Sylvia Morales’ Chicana, Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman and Who Killed Vincent Chin? by Christine Choy and Renee Tajima-Pena.

Each year the Librarian of Congress chooses a select group of films to be inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress.  The Registry champions American films and this year the seminal documentary, The Wobblies (1979), which was awarded a New York Women in Film and Television Women’s Film Preservation Fund grant in 2003, has been honored with inclusion to the list.The Wobblies is an iconic film of the labor movement and an early innovative narrative that incorporates oral histories, archival media, including animation, and other forms of propaganda. “Solidarity! All for One and One for All!” With that slogan, the Industrial Workers of the World, aka the Wobblies, took to organizing unskilled workers into One Big Union, changing the course of history. Along the way to winning an eight-hour workday and fair wages in the early 20th century, the IWW was the first union to be racially and sexually integrated, and was often met with imprisonment, violence, and the privations of long strikes. This award-winning film captures a provocative look at the forgotten American history of this most radical of unions, in the unforgettable and still fiery voices of Wobblie members – lumberjacks, migratory workers, and silk weavers – already in their ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s when they were recorded in the late 1970s.

Eerily echoing current times, The Wobblies boldly investigates a nation torn by naked corporate greed and the red-hot rift between the industrial masters and the rabble-rousing workers in the fields and factories. Replete with gorgeous archival footage, the film pays tribute to American workers who took the ideals of equality and free speech seriously enough to put their lives on the line for them.

The Wobblies is an iconic film of the labor movement and an early innovative narrative that incorporates oral histories, archival media, including animation, and other forms of propaganda. “Solidarity! All for One and One for All!” With that slogan, the Industrial Workers of the World, aka the Wobblies, took to organizing unskilled workers into One Big Union, changing the course of history.At a Women’s Film Preservation Fund screening of The Wobblies at UnionDocs, Center for Documentary Arts a few years ago, audiences were stunned to be reminded of how relevant the film still is today – in its depiction of the struggles over working conditions, racism, migrant workers, forced deportations of immigrants, and the Chicago trial of 101 IWW in 1921 that presaged the Chicago 7 conspiracy trial of 1970. The IWW was the first union to actively recruit Black members, refusing to bow to segregationist laws, and promoting the active participation of women in leadership and in the rank and file. They led ground-breaking struggles for the right to free speech across the country. Their organizing and philosophy laid the groundwork and provided many of the organizers for what would become the CIO in 1935.

Filmically, The Wobblies is a joyous chronicle of interviews with former members of the Industrial Workers of the World, combined with rare newsreel footage, cartoons, posters, artwork, and songs from the period to lovingly evoke the passion, energy and commitment of the Wobblies. While those elements are ubiquitous in today’s documentaries, 40 years ago they were innovative, as was the use of actors reading the words of deceased IWW leaders in voice-over.  The Wobblies were unique in using the voices of rank-and-file women and men; voices that are preserved today only in the film. The Wobblies were among the first in what became a flood of creative historical documentaries released in the 1980s.

Following its film preservation by the Women’s Film Preservation Fund, The Wobblies enjoyed its preservation premiere at Walter Reade Theater at Lincoln Center, and went on to screen at UnionDocs, Center for Documentary Art in New York, and other venues. Most recently, the Museum of Modern Art has just completed a gorgeous 4K restoration of the original film. This restoration will be released theatrically nationwide on by Kino Lorber in 2022.