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“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 August 19, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

The Box

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MULTIMEDIA JOURNALISM

INTERACTIVE MAP

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

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“The Box“
A global multi-media / multi-platform journalism project by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), managed by the Container Shipping Information Service.
BBC News project outline embedded above. Project homepage here. ‘Latest location’ map page here (screengrab below). Download the template to make your own BBC ‘The Box’ container model here.

The BBC paints a 40′ shipping container with its distinctive livery and logo. They attach a GPS transmitted to follow its travels over land and sea. Each time it is loaded or unloaded, its journalists meet the workers, consumers and others whose lives are connected through its travels. What they find is logged live on an interactive map. Ship-spotters are tasked to find and photograph it. A unique high-tech collaborative research project emerges. It’s used by teachers to make trade a ‘live’, exciting topic. So what can it tell us?

Page reference: Tommy Sadler (2013) The Box. followthethings.com/thebox.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 54 minutes.

Posted on August 19, 2024January 6, 2025 by Ian Cook

The Forgotten Space

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“The Forgotten Space“
A documentary film / film essay written & directed by Nöel Birch & Alan Sekula, produced by Frank van Reemst & Joost Verhey and narrated by Alan Sekula for Doc-EyeFilm & WILDart Film Vienna.
Trailer and pay-per-view stream embedded above. Search online for other streaming options here.

So much attention is paid in trade justice activism to producers and consumers, where they live and work, how their lives are connected, how they might be responsible for one another’s lives and lifestyles. But there’s more to the world economy than that. There are plenty of other people and places that make it tick, each with their own concerns and struggles over ethics, justice and sustainability of one kind and another. The Forgotten Space that’s the subject of this documentary film is the sea, and the thousands of container ships that are constantly moving between ports carrying 90% of the commodities that are sold on the world market. This is a whole other world of trade and trade justice, a world that connects the places and the people that virtually all trade justice activism seems to concentrate on. One of its directors – Alan Sekula – is best known as a photographer and, just before embarking on this project, had published a celebrated photo book set at sea called Fish Story. He and co-producer Nöel Burch shared a fascination with perceptions and ideologies of the sea, travelled on board container ships, hung around at the ports they connected, filmed the people they met there – working and protesting – as well as in some of the factories whose goods were being sent in the containers on board. There are two things that are notable about this film. First, it’s about the ‘forgotten space’ of the sea – as mentioned – and sits the viewer amongst the containers on board ship as they are taken slowly across vast seas to deliver their precious contents. But, second, it’s not a straightforward documentary. It’s more of a ‘film essay’ which Sekula narrates, and which is illustrated by the footage that’s included. It’s fascinating, often bleak and beautifully shot. Lots of viewers seem to appreciate the lesson that they have been given. They like Sekula’s polemical and pessimistic Marxist approach – making visible a whole new group of unseen labourers at sea and crises of capitalism that container shipping so vividly illustrates – along with the film’s surprising, sometimes sweet meanderings. Commenters like his open and generous interest in the lives of people he meets. And this leads to some fascinating discussion about how a bleak Marxist understanding of trade is perhaps easier to convey through photography, while the moving image is more unruly and briefly shows glimpses of happiness and humour.

Page reference: Rachael Midlen, Rosie Cotgreave, Lowenna Carlson, Nacim Meziane, Floss Flint & Alex Manley (2024) The Forgotten Space (taster). followthethings.com/the-forgotten-space.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>) groupa a

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes.