ABSTRACT
Focusing on videos produced in the workshops of the Labour project, this essay analyzes representations of the working class in audiovisual media. The aim is to evaluate the (in)visibility of workers on the screen and the political contexts stemming from those representations. To accomplish that, the essay starts out with an analysis of Workers Leaving the Factory (1895), the pioneer film shot by the Lumière brothers, who framed the workers of their own factory. Some of the videos analyzed here place the workers under the spotlight; some, oddly enough, dare to erase the workers, suggesting present-day politics that negate class struggle and the working force as a category in itself. In this work, the author uses some of the concepts defined by Maya Deren concerning the poetics of cinema.
