Andrade-Watkins Documentary Part of RI Exhibit Celebrating Cape Verdean Heritage

Professor Claire Andrade-Watkins‘ 2016 web docuseries Working the Boats: Masters of the Craft, about the history and legacy of Local 1329 of the International Longshoreman’s Association, is part of Blue Collar Rhody, an interactive exhibition hosted by Tockwotton Fox Point Cape Verdean Heritage.

In Working the Boats, Andrade-Watkins, a professor of documentary filmmaking and postcolonial studies in the Marlboro Institute of Liberal Arts and Interdisciplinary Studies, talks to current and retired longshoremen who make up the first predominantly Cape Verdean labor union union on the East Coast, as well as their families.

The series covers life in the Fox Point neighborhood of Providence, Rhode Island, when it was still a Cape Verdean enclave, the dangers and rewards of working the docks, and the history of Local 1329.

Working the Boats is presented alongside photographer/filmmaker Liane Brandon’s Gallery of Memory, a collection of portraits of many of the subjects in Andrade-Watkins’ film, taken in 2009 at the Cape Verdean Progressive Center in East Providence.