Both 69 and Black Badge are documentaries about people being pushed to extremes to get reaction and action on an issue of critical importance to them. Although the distance between Denmark and South Korea covers thousands of miles, the ideals driving the protagonists of both films could not be more closely related. The lesson from both films is that action matters, and in our media savvy age, the right kind of action brought to your cause can either make you or break you, that is if you’re noticed at all. Two desperate quests; two different journeys; two different results, but one desire: to change things for the better.

To begin with there’s Black Badge whose name is taken from the name tag worn by contract workers at a South Korean GM plant. If you’re a regular, salaried worker you get a white badge, but the ever growing number of temporary, or contract workers, get black. And in an odd bit of symbolism that shouldn’t be lost on anyone, the contract workers are treated as a disposable class in the factory hierarchy, by both the plant management and their salaried colleagues. One worker, Hyunsang Park, turns himself into a spectacle by occupying the top perch on a traffic control tower 80 feet in the air in order to protest for more equitable pay and more equitable treatment.

Unfortunately for Park and the few compatriots offering him logistical support, their protest seems to be falling on mostly deaf ears. Interesting comparisons are made between Black Badge and the classic Michael Moore doc Roger & Me as Park, with director Jung-min Choi and his camera in tow, try to reach the management of GM’s Korean plant to try and meet about the appalling conditions and treatment of the contract workers. In anything, the film draws a portrait of how the workers rights struggle isn’t always strike breakers and soaring rhetoric. Sometimes it’s sitting around bored for hours or otherwise stewing about the proverbial roadblocks continually being thrown up, and being surrounded by people who seem not to care.

Institutional apathy is also a recurring theme in 69, which follows the struggles of the residents of Copenhagen’s youth house, a building occupied in 1982 and given to the disenfranchised youth of the Danish city now sold to developers. For 25 years, this place served as a refuge for the poor, the punks, and people who just have no where else to go. An open and inclusive community that’s not only welcoming but functional, the youth house finds itself a victim of gentrification as the city sells it to make room for new condos. But the youth don’t take defeat easily, and rally in a number of ways, legal and illegal, mainstream and subversive, in order to keep their home.

But unlike poor Hyunsang Park, the youths are very successful and drawing media attention to their plight and their action. But rather than just being a chronicle of fighting the man and the old story of how the Powers That Be roll the powerless without hesitation, 69 poses an important question about the difference between good attention and bad attention. While direct action against police and rioting definitely brings the cameras, the focus drawn to the fact that about 20 youths are being evicted with no where to go is supplanted by a more incendiary story about anarchist youth and destruction of property.

Youth meetings to decide courses of actions in regards to saving their home are more war room than a loose coalition. These kids are energized, informed and mobilized, not to mention media savvy in a way people probably wouldn’t expect. Director Nikolaj Viborg’s remarkable access paints a succinct and compelling picture and there are also some great instances of political subversion. Despite all the trouble that the city of Copenhagen cast upon the kids and the reciprocal rioting and civil unrest that came as a result, it turned out that the simplest solution was the easiest after all.

But while 69 wraps up on a happy ending, Hyunsang Park’s fate remains very much up in the air at the end of Black Badge. These are two powerful documentaries, two very different styles and two similar messages about persistence and drive for your cause in the face of overwhelming defeat. Very inspirational, but at the same time very real, 69 and Black Badge are a double-bill for the mind and the heart.