This classic documentary about female custodial workers cleaning offices at night was initially conceived as a protest film about women, labor, and low wages. Produced by the Berwick Street Film Collective—Marc Karlin, Mary Kelly, James Scott, and Humphry Trevelyan—the film also explores the workers’ struggles to unionize between 1970–1972.
One of the key avantgarde films of the 1970’s about women’s representation, laborer rights, and political action, Nightcleaners is the Collective’s most groundbreaking and political film. (Berwick Street Film Collective, 1974, DCP, 90 minutes)
Part of the film series Burning Illusions: British Film and Thatcherism, engaging questions of cinematic representations of race, class, and sexuality through examples of moving images rooted in Britain's contested social and political histories.