DOK Leipzig 2011
Work Hard – Play Hard
Healthy Workplaces Film Award
The European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) presented its third Healthy Workplaces Film Award at the 54th International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film (DOK Leipzig) in October 2011. The prize for best documentary on work-related topics was awarded to Carmen Losmann of Germany for her film Work Hard - Play Hard, a critique of modern theories of work organisation and management.
Peter Rimmer (left) was one of three jury members nominated by EU-OSHA for the Healthy Workplace Award with German film director Dieter Schumann (centre) and Alex Lee (right), organiser of the Auckland Film Festival in New Zealand, on the Heallthy Workplaces Jury.
Work Hard - Play Hard documents the physical, psychological and economic consequences of unfavourable working conditions. It was inspired by a series of suicides at the Renault factory in France, and similar incidents elsewhere in Europe.
Dr Christa Sedlatschek, Director of EU-OSHA agreed that Work Hard – Play Hard was a worthy winner. “Significant changes are taking place in workplaces across Europe, leading to psychosocial risks,” she said. “These risks, which are linked to the way work is designed, organised and managed, as well as to the economic and social context of work, result in an increased level of stress and can lead to serious deterioration of mental and physical health. The film explores these issues, challenging working practices and management theories in Europe’s workplaces.”
The Healthy Workplaces Film Award promotes the importance of workplace health and safety across Europe by challenging filmmakers to showcase documentaries on the issue. Part of EU-OSHA’s pan-European Healthy Workplaces Campaign, the award is endowed with an 8,000 Euro prize fund.
The jury gave special mention to Brazil’s Caio Cavechini and Carlos Juliano Barros for their courageous film To The Bone, which explored working conditions in Brazil’s meat processing factories.
For more information about the DOK Leipzig Festival, visit: http://www.dok-leipzig.de
