Ian Cook – Page 9 – followthethings.com

“Ilha Das Flores (Island Of Flowers)“
A short film written, directed and produced by Jorge Furtado for Casa de Cinema de Porto Alegre, Brazil.
Embedded in full above. Search online to watch the film here. In Portuguese with English subtitles.

It sounds simple: filmmaker Jorge Furtado follows the life of a tomato from Mr Suzuki’s tomato field to a garbage dump ‘on the Island of Flowers’ in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Here, the rotten tomatoes binned in shoppers’ kitchens are selected to feed the local pigs. The leftovers are scavenged by local people who have queued for the chance. But, this no ordinary film. Its footage doesn’t always seem ‘real’. Its voiceover is eccentric but is delivered in monotone. It’s like an economic geography lecture – or a public information film – that’s been made for an audience visiting Planet Earth for the first time. It explains what a human being is, and what the function of money in capitalism is, for instance. It’s full of human beings whose tomato-connected lives audiences can learn a little bit about. It’s a collage made from quick cuts between filmed scenes, found media and ideas. There seem to be so many tangents. But, together, they gradually build a powerful argument that, ultimately, trashes the way that capitalism values people, animals and the environment. Humans who watched it called it a beautiful, hilarious and deeply troubling masterpiece. You’ll have to watch it to believe it. Maybe two or three times. It’s only 13 minutes long. It’s the only example of trade justice activism that we have found that follows a thing from the beginning to the end of its life. And it decentres the stereotypical shopper in fascinating and eccentric ways. But what is Jorge Furtado trying to achieve? What are his cultural reference points? Why is this highly political film presented as a kind of weird joke?

Page reference: Maura Pavalow (2025) Ilha das Flores. followthethings.com/ilhadasflores.html (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 68 minutes.

Posted on September 13, 2024January 9, 2025 by Ian Cook

Plastic China

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Recycle my waste

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

INCLUDE SUFFERING KIDS

BRING MANAGERS INTO VIEW

ENCOURAGE EMPATHY

“Plastic China“
A documentary directed by Jiuliang Wang for CNEX, Beijing TYC & Oriental Companion Media
YouTube trailer and pay-per-view stream embedded above. Search online for other streaming options here.

Recycling plastic is a good thing right? But where does it go to be recycled? Who does recycling work? And what’s that work like? This film traces the world’s plastic waste to a small village in China where families sort, clean and shred it by hand and by machine. Some of it is processed to make nurdles – the tiny plastic beads that factories buy in bulk to melt and make recycled plastic goods. A lot of it isn’t – partly because there are so many types of plastic, and those nurdles can’t mix them together. The film shows the labour of plastic recycling from the perspective of an 11 year old girl called Yi-Jie. Her family eke a living processing plastic waste shipped into their lives from all over the world. She recycles full time to help earn money for, and alongside, members of her impoverished family. Some of the plastic packaging she processes includes images of wealthy consumers enjoying the goodies that they used to contain. These images feed Yi-Jin’s dreams of a better life. She plays imaginative games with the plastic packaging that surrounds her. In one scene she makes and plays with a plastic waste computer. But her family doesn’t earn enough for her to attend school. She doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. Audiences for trade justice activism are used to worrying about who makes their stuff down the supply chain. But the hidden lives and labours in commodities don’t disappear when they’re purchased. Others become attached to them when they’re thrown away. The same labour (and environmental) rights issues are there to worry about too. The materials that commodities are made from never disappear. They just appear somewhere else, in other people’s work, lives and landscapes. This film was terrible PR for the Chinese government. Not surprisingly, they banned it from being shown there. But they went much further, banning the importing and recycling of plastic waste from overseas. Shutting down an industry is perhaps the most powerful impact that trade justice activism can have. But is this what the filmmakers had in mind when they decided to make Plastic China? Could they have predicted that this might happen? What’s their responsibility towards Yi-Jon and her family?

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) Plastic China (holding page). followthethings.com/plastic-china.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: tbc minutes.

Posted on September 12, 2024September 12, 2024 by Ian Cook

B’eau Pal Water

Posted on September 11, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

My Fancy High Heels

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Fashion

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

“My Fancy High Heels“
A documentary film directed by Ho, Chao-ti for Conjunction Films, broadcast on Public Television Service, Taiwan.
Embedded in full above. Mandarin & English, with Mandarin subtitles.

Everyone has challenges, dreams and sources of sorrow and happiness in their lives. Wealthy young women in New York city. Impoverished slaughterhouse, tannery and factory workers in China. Maybe even baby calves. And their lives can be connected by following things. Like a pair of sculpture-like Bally, Prada, Gucci, Fendi high heel shoes that sell for $300 to $1,000 a pair. Each person connected by these shoes is worth knowing, spending time with, walking in their shoes for a while. The calves – and the people who kill, bleed and skin them – too, because their hide makes the softest leather. There’s empathy here for everyone, but connecting these lives, sorrows, happiness through these shoes is jarring for its audiences. The extremes of wealth and poverty, glamour and horror, are so extreme. Exploited workers don’t only make clothes for high street brands and retailers. The most exclusive brands, with the biggest profit margins, are just as tainted. This is a Chinese language film, and it’s difficult to find or buy a DVD with English subtitles. So a lot of the discussion below has been Google translated. The audience, for a change, is not English-speaking and not in the Global North.

Page reference: Jenny Hart & Ian Cook (2024) My Fancy High Heels (taster). followthethings.com/my-fancy-high-heels.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes.

Posted on September 4, 2024January 9, 2025 by Ian Cook

Flip-Flop: A Journey Through Globalisation’s Backroads

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Fashion

PROCESSED IN SOUTH KOREA

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

“Flip-Flop: A Journey Through Globalisation’s Backroads“
A multi-sited ethnographic research monograph by Caroline Knowles, published by Pluto
Preview above. Available from good bookstores. Website here.

When academics, journalists, filmmakers and other thing-followers choose the commodity they will delve into, it’s often something important, something they couldn’t live without. Caroline Knowles takes a different approach, choosing something she doesn’t think about much, something that’s sitting at the back of her closet, something she uses only occasionally. It’s a great idea. Following different commodities brings lots of different materials, places, and people together in one story. There will inevitably be surprises. But she’s not following them back from her closet to the factories where they were made in the Global South. She’s following them forward. From the oil wells of Kuwait, to the petrochemical plants in South Korea that turn this oil into the right kind of plastic that can be shipped as granules, to the factories in China where they are turned into flip-flops, which are then shipped for sale and walking about in Ethiopia. She uses this on-the-ground following to reflect on globalisation. It’s a more complex process than many think it is. It looks this way when you follow things, especially if you de-centre the Western consumer, follow South-South trade, and connect different sites, people and places. The ‘guilty Western consumer’ is nowhere to be seen. So what can this approach tell us about trade justice? In what ways might it be, and contribute to, its activism?

Ian Cook et al (2024) Flip-Flop: A Journey Through Globalisation’s Backroads (holding page). followthethings.com/flip-flop.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: tbc minutes.

Posted on September 2, 2024January 26, 2025 by Ian Cook

Planet Money Makes A T-Shirt

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Fashion

MULTIMEDIA JOURNALISM

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

CROWDFUND YOUR WORK

HAVE IT MADE

MAKE IT META

“Planet Money Makes A T-Shirt“
A podcast series, webdoc & YouTube playlist in NPR’s ‘Planet Money’ series produced by Alex Blumberg.
YouTube playlist embedded above. Listen to the Podcast series here. Visit the webdoc here. Visit the NPR store here.

The USA National Public Radio’s ‘Planet Money’ plans a series of programmes on the international cotton industry, from seed to t-shirt. But they’re not interested in investigating who makes K-Mart or Walmart or H&M t-shirts. Instead, they launch a kickstarter campaign. If enough people pledge $25, their reporters will travel the world to find out who makes a T-shirt that they commission. This means that they can talk directly to farmers, factory owners, workers, shippers and others involed in bringing that shirt to the market. If they find stories of environmental or labour exploitation, it’s their own brand that will be damaged. 25,000 are made. Each features a squirrel hoisting a martini glass (a jokey reference to what economist John Maynard Keynes referred to as capitalism’s ‘animal spirits’). Each pledger was sent a t-shirt as a reward for their investment. Other people could buy one from NPR’s online store.

Page reference: Emelia Price, Steph Small, Sophie Blakstand, Maisie Jenyon, Catt Suttie, Hannah Cookson, Laura Johnston & Abigail Spink (2025) Planet Money Makes A T-Shirt (taster). followthethings.com/planet-money-makes-a-t-shirt.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes.

Posted on August 28, 2024January 28, 2025 by Ian Cook

Machines

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Fashion

BRING MANAGERS INTO VIEW

MAKE IT BEAUTIFUL

MAKE IT INCOMPLETE

“Machines“
A documentary film directed by Rahul Jain with cinematography by Rodrigo Trejo Villanueva for Jann Pictures, Pallas Film & IV Films.
Trailer embedded above. Available on demand on Vimeo here and Dogwoof here. Available on Box of Broadcasts here and Kanopy here (with institutional login). Search online for other streaming options here.

Director Rahul Jain revisits the fabric factories of his youth to document machines and people that print patterns on the rolls of fabric bought by clothing manufacturers to make the shirt, dress or pair of tights that you or I might wear. His film is beautiful, atmospheric, metronomic, disturbing. Watching the machines at work, and the people tending them, is mesmerising. The cinematography is wonderful. It seems like a proper ‘fly on the wall’ documentary for a long time. When the workers later start to talk about their lives and work in this place, it’s depressing, hopeless, boring, toxic, abject, unhappy. This is a powerful film that moves audience members viscerally, but Jain doesn’t want them to do anything to help the workers. Towards the end, workers telling Jain that he’s just like a politician. He visits. He hears problems. He leaves. Nothing changes. So what can a film like this do? What’s the point of making it? How do audience members respond? What difference can it make? Is it about this factory and its workers? Or capitalism as a system? Is this trade justice activism? Or an arthouse film? The answer is open…

Page reference: Annily Skye Jeffries (2017) Machines. followthethings.com/machines.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Page also available in Finnish here (coming soon)

Estimated reading time: 62 minutes.

Posted on August 28, 2024February 4, 2025 by Ian Cook

Primark – On The Rack

"A little deeper into the squalour and another rung down the ladder of exploitation. Children. Several young boys working on the same Primark vest we saw those women sewing earlier...
... one could be as young as 9 or 10. They're testing the stitching so the sequins don't end up falling off in the hands of customers back in Britain. When we asked their ages, their manager kept silent."
[The film then briefly shows the vest's 'atmosphere' label. This is a Primark band promising customers affordable fresh fashion]

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Fashion

“Primark – on the rack“
A documentary film presented by Tom Heap & produced by Frank Simmonds with Dan McDougall for BBC TV’s Panorama series.
Screenshot slideshow of the contested scene embedded above. Watch on Box of Broadcasts (with institutional login) here.

The BBC produces an exposé of cheap clothing retailer Primark. It finds children making its clothes, and sewing and testing their sequins, in factories, slums and refugee camps in India. Primark is asked to contribute to the film before it’s shown. Instead, they decide to cut ties with the supply chains featured, then launch a website to counter the film’s claims. They research the film’s research to pick apart its claims, and then complain to the BBC that one 45 second scene (the one in the screenshots above) is fake. Their critic-silencing strategy has mixed success. The BBC is forced to admit that it cannot be 100% sure that the scene wasn’t faked, and the Panorama team are forced to hand back an award they were given for the film. But Primark’s persistent public attempts to silence this investigative journalism draws attention – for years – to the company’s reputation as the ‘poster boy of child labour in the UK’. Supporters of the film highlight the other 3,555 minutes of the film that Primark didn’t claim the producers had faked? Then, 5 years after the film was broadcast, the Rana Plaza factory complex in Dhaka, Bangladesh collapses and over a thousand garments workers are crushed to death making high street clothes. Journalists, filmmakers and others keep this tragedy relentlessly in the news. UK newspaper headlines refer to this as the ‘Primark factory’. There’s no way that this footage is fake. Primark has to react differently this time.

Page reference: Kate Adley, Richard Keeble, Pippa Russell, Noora Stenholm, William Strang and Tuuli Valo (2025) Primark – on the rack. followthethings.com/primark-on-the-rack.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 124 minutes.

Posted on August 28, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Beautiful Clothes, Ugly Reality

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Fashion

IMPROVE PAY & CONDITIONS

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

MAKE IT FAMILIAR

MAKE IT PROVOCATIVE

FLIP THE SCRIPT!

WORKERS TAKE THE MIC!

ADD MOOD MUSIC

“Beautiful Clothes, Ugly Reality“
A parody catwalk show by garment factory workers sponsored by the Workers’ Information Centre & United Sisterhood Alliance, Phnom Penh, Cambodia, filmed & posted online by Heather Stillwell. See the Chenla Media version here.

Six months after police shot into a crowd of protesting garment workers in Phnom Penh, Cambodian garment workers turned to another kind of protest, a fashion show. Wearing the clothes they were paid so little to make and re-creating scenes from the violent crackdown on their street protests on stage, they challenged Western brands to play their part in stopping this violence and exploitation and paying the people who make their clothes a decent wage. Canadian photojournalist Heather Stillwell’s online film of the show went went viral. How did this happen, and what impacts did it have?

Page reference: Caroline Weston Goodman (2018) Beautiful Clothes, Ugly Reality. followthethings.com/beautiful-clothes-ugly-reality.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Page also available in Finnish here (coming soon)

Estimated reading time: 50 minutes.

Posted on August 28, 2024January 28, 2025 by Ian Cook

Where Am I Wearing?

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Fashion

“Where Am I Wearing? A Global Tour To The Countries, Factories, and People that Make Our Clothes“
A non-fiction book written by Kelsey Timmerman and published by Wiley.
Google Books preview embedded above.

Self confessed ‘All-American Guy’ Kelsey Timmerman is curious about the ‘Made in…’ tags in his favourite clothes. He wants to go to those countries and meet the people who made them for him. So he sets off around the world to meets workers in each place. But he doesn’t work alongside them or quiz them about their pay and conditions. He wants to get to know them as people. So, in Bangladesh, they go bowling together. In Cambodia, they ride a roller-coaster. He wants to appreciate how globalisation isn’t abstract, but it happens to regular (if impoverished) people. He’s not trying to ‘nail’ a corporation. He doesn’t have strong moral views. He sees himself as an innocent abroad, a ‘touron’ (tourist + moron). Readers say this social justice meets crazy road trip book is friendly, funny, easy to read and not at all preachy. Some say everyone should go on a trip like this to appreciate who made their stuff too. What Timmerman has written either naively skims over, or brilliantly introduces, complex trade (in)justice debates. Maybe this is the best way introduce new readers to these debates? Does an example of trade justice activism have to include everything? Where do you start?

Page reference: Emma Baker, Eleanor Bird, Gemma Crease, Imogen Crookes and Coralie Sucker (2012) Where Am I Wearing? followthethings.com/where-am-i-wearing.shtml (last accessed: <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 54 minutes.