Sobre horas extras y trabajo voluntario

A critical short film in black and white about the Cuban policy of unpaid overtime and “voluntary work” as part of plans for economic growth. At the 13th congress of the CTC, the Cuban state trade union movement, in 1973, workers from the textile industry question the value and necessity of this extra work.

Male and female speakers are playfully edited together with a voice-over and captions, and revolutionary rhetoric is interrupted by critical notes about “the vice of unnecessary overtime,” sometimes to comic effect—as when praise for the virtue of voluntary work is followed by the word PERO... (BUT...) filling the screen. A worker calmly describes how she was sent to the same field three times as a volunteer to move the same stones—each time to a different place.

This not only creates an ironic frame for propaganda footage of communist leaders Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and Ho Chi Minh rolling up their sleeves among the workers, but also brings to mind the comparable pressure to put in unpaid overtime in today’s capitalist world.

Sobre horas extras y trabajo voluntario was digitally restored by Vulnerable Media Lab as part of the Sara Gómez Project.