Films at the Whitney: Work/Place

DCP | 2022 | Directed by Cyril Schäublin | Switzerland | 94 minutes | German, French, Russian, and English with English subtitles

Free admission. No registration required.

Taking its title from the “unrest wheel”—the ticking mechanism that animates mechanical clocks—Cyril Schäublin’s UNREST (UNRUEH) transports viewers to a small Swiss watchmaking village in 1877, where cutting-edge technologies like the photograph, telegraph, and pocket watch are remaking work and life. Exposed to new ways of organizing money, time, and labor, Josephine, a young factory worker, gets involved with the local movement of anarchist watchmakers, where she meets Russian traveler Pyotr Kropotkin. For all the quiet beauty of a film shot in the natural light of the Saint-Imier valley, UNREST reenacts this moment of technological and political change as a provocation to reflect on our present.

This screening will also feature a short film:

FAKE FRUIT FACTORY (DCP, 1986, directed by Chick Strand, Mexico and United States, 22 minutes, Spanish and English with English subtitles)

Work/Place traces the cinematic relationship between labor and its environments, from salt mines and city streets to harbors and factories. With features and shorts from thirteen countries, including France, China, Mali, the United States, and Mexico, this five-night series depicts what the place of work has been—and could be—in the lives of people around the globe.

Series curated by Annie Berman and Nathaniel LaCelle-Peterson