Workingsman’s Death

A powerful documentary film in five chapters (and an epilogue) reports on places where hard manual labour is still practised: In Krasni Lutsch, Stakhanov's heirs work illegally in abandoned mines as a last, life-threatening chance to earn a living. In East Java, Indonesia, coolies carry tonnes of sulphur in baskets from the volcano past tourists into the valley. An open-air slaughterhouse (complete with roasting fires for further processing) in Port Harcourt in Nigeria: the cycle of death and the cycle of life. In Gaddani, Pakistan, immigrants dismantle huge ships with welding equipment: the rubbish of the West as a raw material of the "Third World". In the steel factories of Anchan in China, there is an unconditional belief in the economic upswing of the future. Postscript: another future, complete with colourful light show, a disused smelting works in Duisburg that has been converted into an amusement park. (Christoph Huber)

Photo: Austrian Film Museum