12 Days of Factory Films

12 | The Machinist.

A factory worker who hasn't slept in a year, begins to doubt his own sanity. Lots of metalwork.

11 | Cementary Junction

Ricky Gervais and Stephan Merchant tell a universal story of being trapped in a small working town and dreaming of escape in the 1970's. Ricky Gervais plays Mr. Taylor, who spends his days on the factory floor.

10 | Bomb Girls

Technically not a film, but a pretty addictive all the same. Set in the 1940s, Bomb Girls is about women in a munitions factory building bombs for the Allied forces fighting on the European front. We Can Do It!

09 | After the Factory

One of the few documentaries (with a tendancy for the plinky-plonky music) to make it onto the list. Focussing on the next steps for former industrial towns in the US and Europe.

Note: American Made Movie, and Maker, The Movement did not make this list.

08| Manufactured Landscapes -

Feature documentary by Jennifer Baichwal on the world and work of artist Edward Burtynsky. Sustainable angle, and worth watching just for the photography - it's visually stunning.

 07| Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (The Original)

Magical world of machines producing confectionary. Classic.

06 | Gung Ho

Comedy, in which a Japanese company takeover an American car factory. Work attitudes, quality control and cultural differences eed to be worked out to bring jobs back to the local area.

05 | Norma Rae

Single mother and textile worker helps unionize her mill. Legend!

04 | Sign Painters

Faythe Levine & Sam Macon investigate the skilled trade of sign painting in the US. From the 1980s, when storefronts, murals, banners, barn signs, billboards, and even street signs were all hand-lettered with brush and pains to an industry has been overrun by the techno-fueled promise of quicker and cheaper.

03 | Metropolis

Fritz Lang creates a utopian future where humans are divided into two groups: the thinkers, who make plans (but don't know how anything works), and the workers, who achieve goals (but don't have the vision).

02 | Modern Times

The images in this have stuck since the first time I watched this in an art history lecture. Comedy where Charlie Chaplin attempts to survive industrialisation. Brilliant.

01 | Fibreglass Chairs by Charles and Ray Eames

The original and best of the short 'how its made' films we see all too often today. Eames make the production of the fibreglass chair feel like a dance, and make note of patterns, rhythm and movement in the production process. More films from the Eames Office here