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START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

FOLLOW THE THING

SOURCED IN EASTERN EUROPE

LIE TO TELL THE TRUTH

“Life Of A Bullet“
Opening credits to the movie ‘Lord Of War’ directed by Andrew Niccol with visual effects supervisor Yann Blondel.
Opening credits embedded above. Search online to watch them here. Stream the full movie here.

Imagine you could literally follow a thing, from the thing’s own point of view – like a video game – from its sites of production to its sites of consumption and maybe beyond. The opening credits of a Hollywood movie starring Nicholas Cage do just this. Set to Buffalo Springfield’s 1960s counterculture song ‘For what it’s worth (stop, hey what’s that sound)’, Lord of War begins by following the life of a bullet from a piece of sheet metal in a Ukrainian arms factory to a bullet flying out of an AK-47 assault rifle in streets of a Sierra Leone gunfight. Along the way it’s handled by lots of different people connected through its supply chain. At the end of its life, it serves its purpose by entering the forehead of a child soldier. This is when the song abruptly stops and the screen goes black. It’s catchy, bleak and brutal. But a bullet cannot be followed like this IRL. You need some research, an imagination and some heavy duty CGI expertise: like visual effects supervisor Yann Blondel’s. At followthethings.com this example has achieved a cult status. It’s like a foundation stone in the follow the thing genre. We keep coming back to it. Not only is this 3 minutes of GGI animation the best part of the movie (many commenters agree with us on that). It’s also the most brutally clear ‘follow the thing’ example we’ve found. Plus, it’s provoked the wildest discussions we have found about anything featured ion our site. Some discussion is are about the evils of the arms trade, and its undertones of colonialism and racial capitalism. But there are so many other perspectives. Some seem to have experience of shoot-em-up POV video games, others seem to have experience with real guns and ammunition, while still others seem to have an apparently deep knowledge of CGI animation, and more besides. Read the comments we’ve arranged below to see what we mean. If you’re a budding trade justice activist and you want to provoke enthusiastic discussion with your work, maybe this is the example to dig into. But, if you want that discussion to be focused on trade (in)justice, maybe it’s not. The movie, and the iconic opening scene that we’re talking about here, do get caught up in an international campaign to regulate the arms trade alongside another example we’ve researched (check here). But that doesn’t seem to have been the intention at the start.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2019) Life Of A Bullet. followthethings.com/life-of-a-bullet.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 50 minutes.

Posted on November 29, 2024August 2, 2025 by Ian Cook

Teleshopping AK-47

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Security

2006

KALASHNIKOV

AK-47 ASSAULT RIFLE

USED IN THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

CHANGE GOVERNMENT BEHAVIOUR

END VIOLENCE & EXPLOITATION

CREATE SOME CHARACTERS

INVOLVE CONSUMERS

SHOW FEMINIST SOLIDARITIES

LIE TO TELL THE TRUTH

MAKE IT FUNNY

MAKE IT SNAPPY

MAKE IT AVAILABLE

PROMPT GOOD CITIZENSHIP

SUGGEST CONCRETE ACTION

“Teleshopping AK-47“
A spoof teleshopping channel promotion directed by Dougal Wilson and post-produced by MPC for Mother, commissioned by Amnesty International.
Full video embedded above. Search online for versions with other titles here.

Amnesty International is trying to get 1 million people involved in their campaign to tighten loopholes in international arms trade legislation. To demonstrate how easy it is to buy weapons like AK-47 assault rifles, how cheap they are, and how they end up being used in armed conflicts (often involving child soldiers), they commission some culture jamming. Its a short video that imagines that these weapons can be sold by cheery presenters on TV shopping channel’s chintzy pastel-coloured set, just like ice-cream makers and his ‘n’ hers dressing gowns. They’re perfect for child soldiers, the presenters say, like those in Liberia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They give one to a child to demonstrate on set, who cheerfully shoots a mannequin to pieces. Amnesty commission this darkly comedic, camp and chilling 135 second film to show in cinemas, alongside the real ads. They publish it on YouTube. Later, it’s included as an extra on the DVD of Nicholas Cage’s Hollywood arms trade blockbuster Lord of War [see our page on its Life of a bullet opening credits here]. Amnesty can’t advertise on UK TV because they’re a political organisation. And the use of pastiche / parody / humour is a novel approach in human rights campaigning in 2006. But Amnesty really go for it. On top of the cinema ad, there’s a viral email campaign, spoof arms shopping catalogues are delivered through people’s doors, and pop-up high street weapons shops open around the UK with live shooting demonstrations. Commenters are shocked by this disgusting, deeply sinister but informative campaign. One says these weapons are beautiful and every American should have one. Another pretends to agree, saying that guns don’t kill people, people do and, if guns were taken away, people could just as easily kill eachother with knives or rubber ducks. Some say humour is inappropriate for such a serious topic. Others say the ad and the catalogue is so light, so beautifully done, so plausible, that it’s perfect for generating conversations about the international arms trade and its (lack of) regulation.

Page reference: Daisy Livingston (2025) Teleshopping AK-47. followthethings.com/teleshopping-ak-47.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 34 minutes.

Posted on November 29, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Made in Dagenham

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Home & Auto

FIND & GIVE INSPIRATION

HUMANISE WORKERS

FIND SOME CHARACTERS

CREATE SOME CHARACTERS

TELL A STORY

BRING POLITICIANS INTO VIEW

SHOW BAD & GOOD

FIND THE UNIONS

BRING MANAGERS INTO VIEW

SHOW HOW TO WIN

END HAPPY

“Made In Dagenham“
A docu-drama directed by Nigel Cole and produced by Stephen Wooley & Elizabeth Karlsen for HanWay Films & Lipsync Productions.
Trailer embedded above. Available to watch in full on Box of Broadcasts (with institutional login) here. Search online for streaming options here.

In 1968, a group of 187 women sewing car seat covers at a Ford factory in the UK go on strike for equal pay. The work they do isn’t considered by the company to be ‘skilled’. So they get paid less than their officially ‘skilled’ male colleagues doing the same kind of work. Their strike action leads to the passing of equal pay legislation in the UK and overseas. In 2003, film producer Stephen Woolley is in his car listening to a radio show called The Reunion. It brings together people who lived through important historical events to talk about them. The episode that’s on brings together the women involved in this strike action forty years after it took place. Now in their 70s and 80s, he finds the way that they tell their story irreverent, hilarious, colourful and inspiring. He laughs his head off and is hooked. He’s never heard this story before. And they’re such characters! He wants to make a film about their struggle. But is it possible to make a mainstream movie that celebrates women’s involvement in successful strike action and legislative change? Despite a lack of industry interest in funding a movie about such serious topics, the answer is yes. The timing is right in the wake of the 2008 banking crisis and with the UK’s new Equality Act passing into law. The filmmaking team meets and interview the women, and create a central character who sums up the spirit of them all. Made in Dagenham is a hit. It brings an important turning point in the UK’s labour rights history to public attention. Audiences are moved to tears. This strike ‘was the spark that lit a flame that burns to this day’ says one commentator. Another calls it ‘a political movie that’s full on fun’. Some complain that it waters down the politics and overemphasises the fun. But it inspires some women who watch it to make their own claims for equal pay. There’s still along way to go on this issue. The strikers appear in the film’s credits. The fact that it’s based on real events is very clear. But what can a docu-drama do that a documentary cannot? For one thing, it has unhindered ‘access’ to all of the people involved in the story. In real life, some may refuse to take part.

Page reference: Sarah Brown, Izzy Brunswick, Julia Nientiedt, Alistair Wheeler, Camilla Windham & Becky Woolford (2013) Made in Dagenham. followthethings.com/made-in-dagenham.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 40 minutes.

Posted on November 22, 2024July 2, 2025 by Ian Cook

The Luckiest Nut In The World

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Grocery

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

TEACH ECONOMICS

KNOW YOUR HISTORY

BRING REGULATORS INTO VIEW

JUXTAPOSE EXTREMES

TELL A STORY

MAKE IT FUNNY

“The Luckiest Nut In The World“
An animated film written, produced & Directed by Emily James for Fulcrum TV, broadcast in the UK on Channel 4’s Alt-TV series.
Film embedded in full above. Search online for shorter versions and versions with subtitles here.

Who better to explain the rules of international trade than a commodity that has seen it all? An American peanut who wears a stetson hat, plays the guitar, and sings songs about the rules of world trade that work in his favour. Along the way he enlists help from experts and from public information films. Yes, he’s the ‘luckiest nut in the world’ and, as he learns about other less lucky nuts around the world (groundnuts in Senegal, cashew nuts in Mozambique, and brazil nuts in Bolivia), he finds out that it doesn’t have to be this way. All of the world’s nuts – and the people and economies that could benefit from growing and selling them – could be just as lucky is the rules governing world trade weren’t stacked against them. Filmmaker Emily James uses animation to do the impossible: to make these rules, and the inequalities they help to create, not only understandable but entertaining. The film becomes a hit with school teachers. Some of their students say they’re bored with its content, but others say they can’t help humming the songs, mouthing their WTO lyrics. It’s a catchy way to learn some pretty boring but important information about hope the world works (and years before Horrible Histories began). This is an early example of animated film doing what and academic cook or a documentary films cannot. In this case, making abstract content accessible, making the hidden visible, and explaining trade injustice to wider publics in an engaging – funny, weird, you name it – way. ‘What would commodities tell us about their lives if they could talk?’ is an intriguing question that’s answered in some of the earliest follow the thing ‘it-narrative’ writing [see our page on a 1760 travel novel written by a coin here]. ‘What would a commodity sing about its life if it could … um … sing?’ is a question answered, in our experience, only by this film. Thank you Emily.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2011) The Luckiest Nut In The World. followthethings.com/the-luckiest-nut-in-the-world.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 19 minutes.

Posted on November 22, 2024January 7, 2025 by Ian Cook

Darwin’s Nightmare

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Grocery | Security

DISTRIBUTED FROM TANZANIA

SHOT IN AFRICA

DOCUMENTARY FILM

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

JOIN THE DOTS

BRING POLITICIANS INTO VIEW

FIND SOME CHARACTERS

HUMANISE WORKERS

INCLUDE SUFFERING KIDS

EMBODY EXPLOITATION

SHOW THE VIOLENCE

INCLUDE EMOTION

MAKE IT PROVOCATIVE

WALK THE WALK

“Darwin’s Nightmare“
A documentary film directed by Hubert Sauper for Mille et Une Productions.
Trailer embedded above. Search online for streaming options here.

Austrian filmmaker Hubert Sauper examines the effects of a fish that’s been introduced to the African Great Lake Victoria for commercial reasons. They’ve displaced other fish that local people rely upon for their diet and are farmed and flown away on cargo planes to be eaten by Northern consumers. More controversially, some of those planes (allegedly) return full of weapons that fuel civil wars in neighbouring countries. Here, capitalist and colonial logics create a place where Tanzanian fishermen, homeless children, prostitutes, government minsters, Russian pilots, World Bank officials, European Union commissioners live and work together in an ‘ungodly alliance’. Viewers say the film is clever, damaging and racist, and/or artfully depressing. Its director calls it a ‘feel bad’ movie. It’s nominated for an Oscar but loses to a penguin documentary. Northern consumers who love the Omega 3 in fish like Nile Perch start to boycott it, and sales are affected for a while. Darwin’s Nightmare makes Tanzania look terrible. Its government denounces the film, accuses its director of fabricating storylines (e.g the role of this arms trade plays in the spread of HIV), demands that he apologies and pursues the subjects of his film to punish them. Western governments learning about this arms trade from the film put pressure on Tanzania to stop it, and to stop silencing African journalists who have let the world know about it. One journalist criticises the film’s one dimensional portrayal of the hell caused in Tanzania by this fish trade. It’s a mixed picture. So much of its positive effects aren’t included. One critic is sued for calling the film a hoax. There are unprecedented personal attacks on the director, accusing him of acting unethically, threatening him with death and posting fake photos online of him with Saddam Hussein. The main criticism of his film is that it plays to centuries-old Western stereotypes of African savagery and backwardness. Critics say it reveals – but also helps to do – damage to the people of Tanzania. Sauper says he’s not found anything new. All he’s done is joined the dots between well known issues. Between the global arms and food trade, for example. It’s not an out and out activist film. It’s more of a film noir. No solutions are offered. So what responsibility do you have for the impacts of your film noir? Discussions of this film are super-heated.

Page reference: Aparupa Chakravarti & Jeff Bauer (2014) Darwin’s Nightmare. followthethings.com/darwins-nightmare.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 93 minutes.

Posted on November 20, 2024January 10, 2025 by Ian Cook

MILKproject

MILKproject website homepage
MILKproject installation at the local museum in Rumbini, Latvia.

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Grocery

SOLD IN THE NETHERLANDS

MULTIMEDIA ARTWORK

POP THE BUBBLE

FLIP THE SCRIPT

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

TAKE IT TO PIECES

“MILK“
A locative art-mapping project by Esther Polak & Ieva Auzina
Images above are of the MILKproject website homepage and of the MILK installation at the local museum in Rumbini, Latvia. Project website here.

The Milk Project literally follows a thing. It tracks milk from the cow’s udder to the cheese vendor using GPS trackers which record its geograophical location multiple times a second. The devices are given to people in the supply chain, so their movements are also being tracked. Those who have already handled on the milk, and those who are waiting for it (not to mention the partners of those who have it in the moment) can track its movements in real time. This is a locative media art work which also includes photography, storytelling and other methods that make this more than something that traces a line on a map. These supply chain workers can see their lives, and the commodities in which they trades as live, as xcrossinhg borders, as connected. For some artists and activists, GPS technology is the enemy. It’s an abstraction from the world. A tool of capitalist exploitation. But, in this project, it’s helps to paint a surprising intimate portrait of lives connected through trade: in real time for the participants, on the project website and on the rare occasions when it’s exhibited. The project gets caught up in debates about actor networks that are swirling at the time, but the artist and researcher who made see it more as an artwork about landscape. You can’t experience its liveliness now. The website animations don’t work because Adobe Flash was discontinued in 2020 [you may have a fix]. The installations were complicated top set up. The in-the-moment experience for the particpants was the most powerful. A lot has been written about it though. What’s been said?

Page reference: Elizabeth Karin & Anna Whitehouse-Lewis (2024) MILKproject. followthethings.com/milk.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 29 minutes.

Posted on November 18, 2024August 1, 2025 by Ian Cook

Mangetout

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Grocery

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

BRING MANAGERS INTO VIEW

FOLLOW THE PEOPLE

SHOW BOTH SIDES

“Mangetout“
A documentary film directed by Mark Phillips for the BBCTV Modern ‘Times’ series.
Screengrab slideshow embedded above. Documentary available on Box of Broadcasts (with institutional login) here.

In this landmark ‘follow the thing’ documentary, director Mark Phillips follows the simple magetout pea (also known as a snowpea) and connects the lives of its producers, retailers and consumers. He films a dinner party in the UK’s home counties where mangetout is a side dish. The guests talk about ‘third world’ lifestyles and exploitation. He films the farm where they are grown in Zimbabwe and introduces us to some of the farm workers and their boss. He visits a UK supermarket and asks shoppers if they buy mangetout. It wasn’t a common vegetable in 1997. And he asks them where Zimbabwe is. Not many seem to know. He films the person who sources Zimbabwe-grown mangetout for the Tesco supermarket chain. And he films this person’s visit to the farm in Zimbabwe where he’s treated like royalty. He’s visiting to monitor the processes that provide the identical size, shape and quality mangetout peas at the price he needs. That’s his job. He wants the farm boss to instruct his workers to improve the quality. The customers – who he says are his boss – will demand this. This is such a fascinating film. It jumps backwards and forwards between these different people talking about mangetout peas and the ways that big business and global capitalism works. From these different perspectives, everyone has an opinion to share. The film’s inclusion of so many perspectives is unprecedented. Everyone seems to speak quite frankly. The power that the Tesco supermarket chain, and the person who sources its mangetout, is enormous. Its visiting buyer talks to the farm manager using a language of partnership, but the farmers say they have to do what they are told. The diners talk about the exploitation of ‘third world’ farmers in casual and abstract ways, and the film cuts to the farm workers talking about the lives they can lead with the money they earn. The people at the top of the ladder are white. The people at the bottom are black. With all of these different stakeholders in it means that, as a viewer, you’re not positioned as a consumer who needs to act by changing your consumption – that’s quite a common trope. You could empathise with any and all of the film’s participants, in different ways. This film was made to educate it audience – carefully, empathetically, through the careful juxtaposition of scenes and voices from a supply chain – about how capitalism works. It’s many juxtapositions give you lots to think about. And, it had a huge impact that on the UK supermarket industry in the 1990s. This was a golden time in trade justice activism. So many campaigns were starting up, and corporations hadn’t yet learned how to respond. Tesco were embarrassed. To borrow a phrase from elsewhere, this film showed ‘capitalism with its clothes off’. They had to do something. They and their rivals didn’t want ‘another Mangetout’. It’s a shame it’s so hard to find now.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2025) Mangetout. followthethings.com/mange-tout.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 52 minutes.

Posted on November 15, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

King Corn: Your Are What You Eat

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Grocery

APPLE & CRANBERRY JUICE

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THINGS

TAKE THEM TO PIECES

FLIP THE SCRIPT

CULTIVATE RELATIONSHIPS

BRING PEOPLE TOGETHER

BRING MANAGERS INTO VIEW