Songs have often emerged from the coalface of work: the blues, famously, incorporated work songs of African-American slaves and ex-slaves voicing their response to enforced labour in the plantations of the American South. Rock and roll reworked these laments for teenage, consumer culture, which has led to odes to professions as varied as Capleton’s ‘Fireman’s Anthem’ (2006) or The Beatles’ ‘Paperback Writer’ (1966). Franz Kafka provided the blueprint for the the worker-writer, whose non-creative work infiltrated his imagination. And whether you work in an office or not, it’s familiar to us all as a cinematic fixture – from Nunnally Johnson’s The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956) to Martin Scorsese’s Wolf of Wall Street (2013). Movies have turned characters such as the struggling salesman, the cut-throat manager, or the ethical journalist into modern archetypes, and Jedermann into a heroic figure. The film programme will be screened at Kino Xenix during the biennial.