The Killing Floor

Praised by the Village Voice as the most “clear-eyed account of union organizing on film,” The Killing Floor tells the true story of the struggle to build an interracial labor union in Chicago’s stockyards during the early 1900s. The brutal efforts of management to divide the workforce along ethnic lines eventually boiled over in the Chicago Race Riot of 1919. The first feature film by actor/director Bill Duke (A Rage in Harlem), The Killing Floor was invited to screen at the Cannes Film Festival in 1985 and won the Sundance Film Festival’s Special Jury Award. Until this vital new 4K restoration by the UCLA Film & Television Archives, the film has been impossible to see other than through VHS tapes and other bootlegged copies. Starring Damien Leake, Alfre Woodard, Moses Gunn, and Dennis Farina. (118 mins., DCP)