The Liberated Broom
Coline Grando Belgium 2023 88 min.
In the early 1970s, the cleaners of UCLouvain did something extraordinary: they fired their bosses and set up their own cleaning cooperative, Le Balai Libéré. 50 years later, today's UCL cleaners meet the workers of those days and wonder: is working without a boss still an option? Or was it only possible in the pioneering context of a completely new city where people wanted to do things differently?
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Louvain-la-Neuve, the new town that was built in the 1970s to house the French-speaking part of the Leuven University after the split in 1968, was at the time a big blank page where utopias could be tried out. In this context, the cleaning women of the young university revolted and made history with their independent cleaning cooperative. Director Coline Grando meets up with those cleaners and with the people who clean the university today. Together, they examine not only the past but also the present. How do they view their work? What are their working conditions? And would such a project still be possible today?
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Keywords
Credits
Director
Coline Grando
Producer
Cyril Bibas, Michel Steyaert
Production company
Centre Vidéo de Bruxelles, Le Centre de l’Audiovisuel à Bruxelles, TAKE FIVE
Cinematography
Hélène Motteau
Editing
Lydie Wissaupt-Claudel
More info
Dialogues
French
Subtitling
English