Last Exit to Brooklyn(1989)
dir. Uli Edel
The American Dream's discarded people.
Where to watch: Streaming on Kanopy, Tubi, Amazon Prime VideoLetterboxd ↗
In 1950s Brooklyn, a closeted union organizer, a teenage sex worker, and a pregnant factory girl move through interlocking stories of poverty, violence, and desperation during a labor strike. Adapted from Hubert Selby Jr.'s novel.
Why it’s here
Punk in refusing any redemptive arc — this is 1950s Brooklyn stripped of nostalgia, populated by people crushed by poverty, homophobia, and violence with no way out. Pedagogical, with a real content warning, in showing what "the good old days" actually cost the people the myth left out.
Where This Film Lives
- Setting
- North America
Read Alongside
Books that share a topic, theme, or setting with this film.
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Ask boys about sex. Then listen.
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Against Tech Oligarchy: Worker Resistance in the World's Most Powerful Industry
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How Silicon Valley became a ruling class.
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Bread and Roses, Too
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Bread. Roses. Neither is optional.
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Click, Clack, Moo: Cows That Type
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Cows, a typewriter, and a labor strike.
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Germinal
Émile Zola
They had nothing left to lose. They struck anyway.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Maya Angelou
She wrote herself alive. They tried to erase it.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
If They Move... Kill 'Em!
David Weddle
Peckinpah shoots, America flinches.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST