An Injury to One
Thematic Program

Running Time:
53 minutes
Screening Info:
Friday, April 9
1:20 pm
Cinema One
Director(s):
Travis Wilkerson
Producer(s):
Susan Fink
Editor(s):
Travis Wilkerson
Cinematographer(s):
Travis Wilkerson
Release Year:
2005
Country:
US

During World War I, the Anaconda Mining Company  in Butte, Montana, churned out 10 percent of the world’s copper, raking in massive profits as its unprotected workers toiled in mines so dangerous that mortality rates were higher there than in the trenches in France. Enter Frank Little, a traveling union organizer and anti-war activist who came into town to urge the workers to unite.  In a chilling sign to workers about the perils of insurgence, Lynch was dragged from his boarding house and lynched from a railroad trestle. Travis Wilkerson’s film builds up to this pivotal moment, before mournfully contemplating the toxic wasteland the Anaconda Mining Company bequeathed to Butte when it closed shop in the 1980s. Through an extraordinary synthesis of text, image, and song, Wilkerson reconstructs a haunting industrial history of Butte, its ravaged landscape a metaphor for the shattered dreams of social revolution.  ST