Bring people together – Page 2 – followthethings.com

“Black Gold: Wake Up & Smell The Coffee“
A documentary film directed by Marc & Nick Francis, starring Tadesse Meskela, for Speak-It Films & Fulcrum Productions.
Trailer embeded above. Rent or buy on Vimeo here. Search streaming availability here.

At a time when coffee shops are appearing on every street corner in the Western world and the home of the world’s finest coffee beans is mired in poverty, British filmmakers Marc and Nick Francis don’t want to make yet another documentary about Ethiopia needing Western aid. They want to show Tadesse Maskela, a representative of an Ethiopian coffee co-operative, as he travels the world trying to get a better price for his farmers’ coffee. Tadesse is irritated that importers such as Starbucks are making massive profits from this coffee while the people who grow it in ‘the home of coffee’ don’t even have schools, clean water or healthcare. This is a fascinating ‘follow the people’ documentary because it chooses to follow a producer as they try to find where the commodity the grow and sell ends up, and who profits from them. It’s not a guilty consumer trying to find who made their stuff. It stars an African man on a quest in the Global North, looking for his coffee on the shelves of a British supermarket, asking questions not only about where the coffee goes, but where – and by whom – the profits from its trade are generated and enjoyed. How will people explain to him the extraordinary inequalities in wealth and poverty along the coffee supply chain? From his perspective, this doesn’t make sense.

Page reference: Blayne Tesfaye & Julia Potter (2012) Black Gold: Wake Up & Smell The Coffee. followthethings.com/blackgold.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 26 minutes.

Posted on September 14, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Find Your Doppelganger

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Apps

2015

UNBRANDED

PHOTO APP

DOPPELGANGERS WORLDWIDE

USED WORLDWIDE

PHONE APP CONCEPT

POP THE BUBBLE

ENCOURAGE DETECTIVE WORK

BRING PEOPLE TOGETHER

ENCOURAGE EMPATHY

“Find Your Doppelganger“
A concept for a mobile phone app submitted by Rachel Grant as part of a BA Geography dissertation at the University of Exeter, UK.
Full concept text below.

Student Rachel Grant likes to try out the latest apps on her smartphone. She’s tried ones that tell you which celebrity you look like. That’s OK. But there’s a photographer who finds unrelated people who look exactly alike. The technical terms is doppelganger. He arranges for them to meet, photographs them together and finds they feel connected, like lost relations. So what if there was a phone app – like the ones that help you find your celebrity lookalike – that could scan your face and introduce you to your supply chain doppelganger? A garment worker? A tungsten miner? A tea picker? A delivry driver? A plastic recycler? Someone who helped to make your stuff? Might you feel more empathetic towards supply chain workers if they looked like you? Would it be easier to imagine walking in their shoes? What if the ‘Find Your Doppelganger’ app gave you the chance to chat? What if you met up? What impact could meeting a lost ‘relation’ like this have on you?

Page reference: Rachel Grant (2024) Find Your Doppelganger. followthethings.com/doppelganger.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes.

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

Made In Cambodia

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Fashion

BRING PEOPLE TOGETHER

ENCOURAGE EMPATHY

“Made in Cambodia“
A dissertation by Helen Clare, submitted as part of their BA Geography degree at the University of Birmingham, UK.
Click the preview pages above to read the dissertation.

Undergraduate student Helen Clare looks through her clothes and finds an H&M t-shirt ‘Made in Cambodia’. She’s traveling to Cambodia to do some charity work in her summer vacation. She wants to find and meet one of the garment factory workers who helped to make that T-shirt for her. But, despite her best efforts, she cannot gain access to the factories where she’s convinced it may have been made. So, she does the next best thing. She takes a course that will give her the qualification to work there. What does she learn along the way? Who does she get to meet? And what can she learn from them about the lives her t-shirt connects?

Dissertation reference: Helen Clare (2006) Made in Cambodia. BA Geography Dissertation: University of Birmingham, UK (followthethings.com/madeincambodia.shtml last accessed <insert date here>)

Page reference: Helen Clare (2024) Made in Cambodia. followthethings.com/made-in-cambodia.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 92 minutes.

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

China Blue

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Fashion

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

HUMANISE WORKERS

FIND A CHARACTER

FOLLOW THE PEOPLE

BRING MANAGERS INTO VIEW

PUT A MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

FOLLOW THE THING

BRING PEOPLE TOGETHER

ENCOURAGE EMPATHY

“China Blue“
A documentary film directed by Micha X. Peled for Teddy Bear Films.
Trailer embedded above. Search online for streaming options here.

The first film in Micha X. Peled’s ‘Globalisation Trilogy’ is a critique of cut-price retailer Wal-Mart. For the second, Peled finds out how the goods that it sells can be so cheap. He travels to China, to a jeans factory, trying to avoid the authorities in order to make his film. The factory owner is proud, but the working conditions are harsh, and its clients are demanding. Corporate executives sourcing clothes from the factory haggle the price down. They couldn’t compete if they paid living wages. Along with factory manager Mr Lam, a charming , fun-loving 16 year old called Jasmine is the film’s main character. She trims threads, and takes pebbles out of pockets – for up to 20 hours a day. She lives in a cramped dormitory and speculates with her friends about the lives of the ‘fat and tall’ people that wear these jeans overseas. She writes a letter and places it in a pocket for a shopper to find and read. She meets someone whose jeans she has helped to make. She dreams of being a martial arts princess. She wants to work here but is worn down by the endless, tiring work. The film makes some viewers feel implicated. Only a tiny increase in the cost of those jeans could give Jasmine and her friends a living wage. But nobody in China can see this. Peled’s film was banned there.

Page reference: Jess Mayers, Alex Horgan, Sam Spicer, Mike Rastall, Rob Donald and Andi Frost (2012) China Blue. followthethings.com/china-blue.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 64 minutes.

Posted on August 21, 2024January 26, 2025 by Ian Cook

Handprint

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Fashion

2013

STELLA MCCARTNEY

ICONIC DRESS

MADE IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH

WORN WORLDWIDE

CULTURE JAM

FASHION FILM

CHANGE INDUSTRY MINDS

INVOLVE A CELEBRITY

CHOOSE AN AUDIENCE

BRING PEOPLE TOGETHER

ENCOURAGE EMPATHY

MAKE IT SNAPPY

“Handprint“
A short fashion film by Mary Nighy for Livia Firth’s EcoAge consultancy.
Uploaded to YouTube & embedded in full above.

The elegant, graceful actor and model Eletrra Wiedemann, wrapped in a towel after a brisk shower, walks through her beautiful apartment, designer clothes strewn everywhere. As she chooses a red dress, other people’s hands appear to help her get it on, her jewellry on, her shoes on. She doesn’t flinch until she sees the people whose hands these were in a mirror. This film isn’t about the footprint of her clothes. It’s about the handprint. These are the people who made them for her. In the room. With her. Helping her to get dressed. Every day. She couldn’t do it without them. Gulp. This film was made for an exclusive fashion industry audience to encourage them to take care of supply chain workers in the wake of the Rana Plaza factory collapse. It was later published online for a wider audience. What impacts could this vision have on them? What can we find out?

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2020) Handprint. followthethings.com/handprint.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 42 minutes.