We, Women Workers for the Sogantal

A film by Nadjeda Tilhou

58 min / documentary / 2008
Coproduction : Alter Ego / Télessonne

with production support from the Region of Centre, the CNC (National Center for Cinema and the Moving Image) and Procirep-Angoa

In 1974, in a Portugal freed by its soldiers from 48 years of dictature, the women workers for the ‘Sogantal’ were the first to occupy their factory in order to obtain better work conditions.
And when their boss, a Frenchman, left the place because he couldn’t impose his own conditions, they invented an original reply: selling the tracksuits they produced in order to ensure their wages.
During the ‘revolutionary period’, many people came to meet the Sogantal workers. They were filmed.
Today, a large number of them still live in the suburbs of Lisbonne.
Individually, they’ve got a new job, made a new life. They meet only occasionally. Because some of them have chosen silence or others simply never get the opportunity to talk about it, the struggle seems to be ‘forgotten’.
None of them have seen the pictures that were shot then.