Bread and Roses - Latino USA Episode 425

As a group, immigrant workers are rarely seen and seldom heard in modern U.S. media.

Beginning June 1st, though, Bread and Roses will be released nationwide.

The bilingual film chronicles the struggle of immigrants to form a union in Southern California during the 1990s.

The film premiered recently in Los Angeles.

Correspondent Robin Yorovich was there and filed this report.

As Bread and Roses opens, its heroine, Maya Montenegro, played by Pilar Padilla, survives a dramatic border crossing.

Once in Los Angeles, she joins her sister, Rosa, played by Elpidia Carrillo, working as a janitor in a downtown high-rise. Soon, a union organizer comes calling.

Hi, is Rosa in? Yeah, Hold On. Mami! Que? Hay alguien en la puerta-

Hi, I'm Sam Shapiro, the Justice for Janitors campaign.

I'm Rosa, Justice for Rosa's campaign.

Maya liked Sam, played by actor Adrien Brody and the idea of the union, but the more hardened and cynical Rosa is not so easily persuaded.

There is every chance you can get fired. I've seen it before. What are you going to do? Pay the rent? Feed my kids?

And you? You better keep away from this nice one. Listen, they will fire anyway!

Nearly a decade after he came up with the idea for Bread and Roses, screenwriter Paul Laverty was back in Los Angeles for the film's opening party.

He'd just arrived from his state of Scotland in the early 90s when thousands of janitors, mostly from Mexico and Central America, were beginning to demand better pay and benefits.

I went along and I met the people. I met cleaners who were activists and trade union organizers.

And they were fantastic people. And there was a kind of a spark to them that really got to me, you know, the way they organized and a real depth of human experience.

You know, and there was a determination to organize and change their lives without making a fuss or playing victim.

Laverty convinced director Ken Loach there was a film in the story of the janitors and he began poking around the union where he ran into organizer Jono Shaffer.

The first time I met Paul, he sort of appeared and started asking a bunch of questions and I was totally suspicious about who this guy was, you know.

But over time he, you know, sort of wore on me. He said he was making a movie. I was like, yeah, right, everybody in L.A. is going to make a movie. You know, it's like this will end up in some trash can somewhere.

Shaffer, who bears a resemblance to the film's organizer, says Laverty and Ken Loach took some artistic license, making the work of the organizer a little more reckless and spontaneous than it is in real life.

But he says they didn't exaggerate the difficulty of organizing a union in the United States.

Real life janitor Dolores Sanchez says she saw a lot of herself and her co-workers in Bread and Roses.

I don't know. I cried during the whole movie because it does have several things that those of us from other countries have been through.

For the three and a half years it took to organize the union at her company, Sanchez says she went to work every night fighting her fears of a confrontation with the boss or of losing her job.

During the three and a half years, I'd ask myself, if you lose your job, how are you going to support your kids?

Now Sanchez says the sacrifices of those years are paying off. She couldn't have a much wanted third child until she got family health insurance. Now she's got it and her baby's due late this summer.

Bread and Roses mixes drama and fiction with reality.

Director Ken Loach required the actors to work a shift alongside real life janitors, some of whom also appear in the movie along with other L.A. activists.

Si se puede, si se puede, si se puede...

In this scene at a union celebration, the music is provided by Los Jornaleros del Norte, five men who haven't quit their real life day jobs.

They're members of L.A.'s day laborers union and they play their topical songs at labor and immigrant rights events.

Bread and Roses has received mostly thumbs up from the critics, but as a business venture, it's a little risky, says its distributor Tom Ortenberg of Lionsgate Films.

It doesn't have Tom Cruise or Mel Gibson, it doesn't have a lot of action, it's got a political bent to it about union organizing and those just aren't easy things. It's not a popcorn, bubble gum kind of movie.

The film was made independently, backed by a group of investors from Europe, but says Ortenberg he hopes it's successful enough at the box office to convince Hollywood to take on similar projects.

Bread and Roses debuts June 1st in 15 to 18 cities across the country with more to follow in the coming weeks.

For Latino USA, I'm Robin Yurovich in Los Angeles.