Destination – worldwide – Page 3

“Bananas!*“
A documentary film directed by Fredrik Gertten for WG Film AG, Sweden
Free trailer and on demand stream embedded above. Search online for other streaming options here.
The first of two films on this topic. The second is “Big Boys Gone Bananas!*”. See our page in this here.

Swedish Filmmaker Fredrik Gertten tracks a ‘class action’ legal case in which lawyers working on behalf of a group of Nicaraguan banana workers sue the American fruit multinational Dole in a Califiornia court for exposing them to a banned pesticide known to cause impotency in men. Gertten follows a flamboyant Cuban-heritage, Los-Angeles based lawyer called Juan ‘Accidentes’ Domingiuez as he and his team gather evidence from affected workers and present it in court. Grainy court-TV footage is cut into the film, and the scenes are remarkable. Dominguez’ attourney Dwane Miller encourages Alberto Rosales and other plaintiffs to explain how their lives were ruined by these chemicals robbing them of their fertility. And when Dole CEO David Delorenzo is in the dock, Miller gets him to admit that Dole used these banned pesticides knowing the risk. Dole attorney Rick McKnight cross examines the plaintiffs, aiming to show they are drunks and liars. When the verdict comes in, Dole is largely found guilty and ordered to pay compensation to the plaintiffs. Dominguez conveys the good news to the farming communities, phoning in to a radio show, and visiting to talk to a packed hall of workers. He’s a hero. But this is a test-case. If it’s successful, thousands of other victims would be able to claim compensation from Dole too. So, as the film is being readied for its premiere at the Los Angeles Film Festival, Dole launches a sophisticated smear campaign against Dominguez (accusing him of fraud – a charge later discmissed) and the film (which they claim is based on fraudulent content). Suspiciously, damning reviews appear in newspapers and film trade publications before teh film has its premiere (i.e. before anyone had seen it). Dole forces it to be taken out of competition and the festival organiser reads a disclaimer to the audience before its only screening. Fredrik Gertten, the director, doesn’t know it at the time but this is be the first of two films he will make on this topic. The second will be about Dole’s attempts to silence the first. He films everything as the chaos unfolds. [See our page on the sequel – ‘Big Boys Gone Bananas!*’ – here] But this scandal means Bananas!* picks up priceless free publicity, and diverse allies, worldwide. When it’s finally distributed, it’s marketed as ‘the film Dole doesn’t want you to see.’ Maybe if Dole had left it alone, Bananas!* wouldn’t have become a ‘must see’ example of trade justice fillmmaking, then and now. If their corporate public relations team had decided to just keep quiet, they wouldn’t have amplified Dole’s corporate misbehaviour that Bananas!* tracked so diligently. Amplifying a critique by trying to silence it is called the ‘Streisand Effect’, by the way, and this isn’t the only example on our site. So much happened in and around this film that this is an epic followthethings.com page. There are so many comments to read. But does the scandal about the silencing of the film distract from the scandal of Dole’s banned pesticide use, and its effects on so many thousands of banana workers in Nicaragua? As you will see, the answer is yes and no.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2020) Bananas!*. followthethings.com/bananas.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 100 minutes.

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

Dow Vs Bhopal: A Toxic Rap Battle

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Home & Auto

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

CHANGE CITIZEN BEHAVIOUR

CHANGE GOVERNMENT BEHAVIOUR

CHANGE CORPORATE BEHAVIOUR

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

“Dow Vs Bhopal: A Toxic Rap Battle“
A music video by Sofia Ashraf published on YouTube.
Embedded in full above.

Chennai rap musician Sofia Ashraf’s Nicki Minaj-sampling protest song ‘Kodakainal Won’t’ goes viral on YouTube in 2015, drawing attention to a Unilever factory in India dumping mercury into the environment. A year later, she releases this video to draw attention to the most notorious industrial disaster in Indian history: an explosion at the Union Carbide pesticide factory in Bhopal in 1984 which released poisonous gas that killed more than 15,000 people and sickened over half a million more. A campaign has been running ever since for the victims to be compensated and the toxic legacy of the explosion to be cleaned up, even after Union Carbide was bought by Dow Chemical. Ashraf revived a rap written and performed in 2008 to support an NGO petition to the US Government’s Department of Justice to hold Dow Chemical to account. If the petition reaches 125,000 signatures, the DoJ is obliged to respond. In the video, Ashraf performs both sides of the argument as she sees it: the Indian activist side calling Dow Chemical to account, and the US government’s disdainful approach to those demanding compensation. The video encourages people to sign the petition. The 125,000 goal is reached. But what does this unlock? What can protest music do for trade justice activism?

Page reference: Nicole Sparks, Ginny Childs, Allie Short, Kat Cook, Lauren Warner & Sophie Wolf (2016) Dow Vs Bhopal: A Toxic Rap Battle (taster). followthethings.com/dow-vs-bhopal-a-toxic-rap-battle.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes.

Posted on September 20, 2024January 25, 2025 by Ian Cook

Ahava Stolen Beauty

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Health & Beauty

CHANGE CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

CHANGE CORPORATE BEHAVIOUR

CHANGE GOVERNMENT BEHAVIOUR

START WITH A PARADOX

KNOW YOUR HISTORY

TARGET THE RIGHT BRAND

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

“Ahava Stolen Beauty“
An activist campaign organised by CODEPINK Women For Peace.
12 video YouTube playlist compiled by the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights embedded above shows protests taking place at multiple sites selling Ahava products in Canada, USA, The Netherlands, Israel & France. Click here for more footage of campaign protests and explainer videos. Click here for Code Pink’s ‘Ahava Stolen Beauty’ campaign website.

After the aftermath of Israel’s invasion of Gaza in 2008-9, members of the American women-led grassroots peace and human rights organisation CODEPINK visit a factory on the bank of the Dead Sea which makes cosmetic products from its salts and minerals on occupied Palestinian land. According to the Geneva Convention, occupying forces cannot take or profit from the natural resources of an occupied territory. Sold in department stores, spas and Ahava stores around the world, Ahava products are stamped as ‘Made in Israel’. Critics say that the company’s profits support the illegal settlement where the factory is based. So CODEPINK encourage women are concerned about beauty and disgusted by the occupation to use their consumer power to boycott Ahava products, and to use their citizen power to protest at their sites of sale (in bikinis and bathrobes to attract attention). When the US arm of Ahava later launches an #ahavareborn rebrand campaign on twitter and asks for suggestions, critics pile in with sarcastic slogans about aspects of the occupation that Ahava products can help to conceal or wash away. As the boycott gathers momentum, supporters of Israel criticise it – and the wider Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) movement that it became part of – as antisemitic, and pro-Israel consumers start counter-campaigns, buycotts, encouraging people to buy as many Ahava products as they can from targeted stores. But, despite this, Ahava stores shut, retailers refuse to stock Ahava goods, governments pass legislation forbidding ‘Made in Israel’ to be printed on goods produced in occupied Palestinian territories and, eventually, Ahava moves its factory to an unoccupied site. To add to this mix, laws forbidding the boycotting of ‘Made in Israel’ goods are passed around the world. This is an epic, controversial example of effective trade justice activism. The message was simple: there was no beauty in occupation. The repercussions of this actvism are with us today

NB this page is a taster. There’s much more to add after out new site is launched. Please check back.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) Ahava Stolen Beauty (taster). followthethings.com/ahava-stolen-beauty.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 19 minutes.

Posted on September 20, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Where Heaven Meets Hell

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Grocery | Health & Beauty | Home & Auto |

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

INCLUDE HAUNTING & HORROR

USE MYTHS & LEGENDS

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

SHOW IT BACK

“Where Heaven Meets Hell“
A documentary film produced by Sasha Friedlander for Sasha Films LLC & Independent Television Service
Trailer embedded above. Search for online streaming here. Track down a DVD copy here.

Filmmaker Sasha Friedlander visits a stunningly beautiful active volcano in Indonesia called Kawa Ijen. Heaven. It’s a place that loads of tourists visit to take photos of this bubbling cauldron of toxic sulphur gas. They’re also shocked and amazed to see men emerging out of these sulphur clouds carrying on their shoulders baskets containing blocks of raw yellow sulphur, mined hot from the volcano’s insides. This is unbelievably picturesque, hard and dangerous work (physically and chemically). Some say it’s a vision of hell. Friedlander sticks around, her tiny crew following the sulphur miners down into the volcano to better understand the work that they do, their lives and their reasons for doing a job that’s clearly so poorly paid and so extraordinarily hazardous to their health. Making this film is hazardous to the filmmakers’ health too. They struggle with their working conditions. This film they make provides intimate portraits of four men who do this work and their families. Audiences are moved by what they see. It’s beautiful and horrific. Friedlander returns to the village where most of the miners live to show the film to their families. That’s filmed too. They’re shocked. The men hadn’t told their families what their work was like. Some commenters say that workers unhappy with their jobs should get a safer and better paid job somewhere else. They’ve ‘chosen’ to work there. This film shows why making a different ‘choice’ is not as easy as it sounds. Where Heaven Meets Hell follows the journey of sulphur up and out of the Kawa Ijen volcano, to the cabins where the miners get paid for it by weight. But that’s as far as the following goes. Sulphur (and its derivatives) can be found in countless commodities and the processes used to make them – e.g. it’s used to refine sugar, and its an essential ingredients of matches – because it brings specific properties that producers and consumers rely upon. Where Heaven Meets Hell is an excellent example of a follow the thing project that ‘starts somewhere different’. It doesn’t start or end at a factory, for example. Those followings can be nice and linear, easy to trace, easy to convey to an audience. But starting in a place where a raw material is extracted from the earth presents a different view of international trade. So many raw materials like sulphur travel along countless supply chains, and become ingredients in countless industrial processes and commodities. Following raw materials can be much, much more complex. The supply chains of something basic like sulphur can infiltrate so many other supply chains, so many other things, so many other places and lives. This means that any trade justice ‘solutions’ that audiences might want to support are from straightforward. Try boycotting sulphur! Start by looking for sulphur compounds on ingredient labels. That’s the top of the volcano.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2016) Where Heaven Meets Hell. followthethings.com/where-heaven-meets-hell.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 53 minutes.

Posted on September 20, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Manufactured Landscapes

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Home & Auto

SMART CIRCUIT BREAKERS

MUTLIPLE OTHER COMMODITIES

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

“Manufactured Landscapes“
A documentary film directed by Jennifer Baichwal, starring photographer Edward Burtynsky, for Zeitgeist Films.
Trailer embedded above. Search online for streaming availability here.

Filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal follows industrial landscape photographer Edward Burtynsky as he visits factories, dumping and recycling sites in China and Bangladesh. His photos are stunning, beautiful, mesmerising and disturbing. Her film picks out the details and follows them, ‘unfreezing’ his photos in time. On the one hand, it’s a portrait of the artist at work. But, on the other, some say it’s a critique of the way that his work is more interested in the aesthetics than the politics and ethics of global capitalism. As he’s high above or far away trying to get a stunning visual composition framed and lit just right, she documents lives and livelihoods up close. People watching the film say that it transforms the cinema into an art gallery, as his photos linger long on the screen. Many remark on the ‘beauty’ of his work. It’s sublime. But is Baichwal’s film complicating these aesthetics with ethics? Or does his interest in capitalist industrialisation’s huge scale, order, patterns and visual contrasts ,and his eye for pollution, invite the viewer to see these ethics at play?

Page reference: Lucy Bannister, Harriet Beattie, Katy Charlton, Lawrence Cook, Daisy Livingston, Romain Tijou & Alex Tucker (2011) Manufactured Landscapes. followthethings.com/manufactured-landscapes,shtml (last accessed <insert dae here>)

Estimated reading time: 36 minutes.

Posted on September 20, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Phone Story

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Electronics

2011

APPLE

IPHONE

MINED IN THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

REACH NEW AUDIENCES

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

TARGET THE RIGHT BRAND

TAKE IT TO PIECES

MAKE IT META

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

INCLUDE HAUNTING & HORROR

INCLUDE SUFFERING KIDS

MAKE A WEBSITE

STREISAND EFFECT

“Phone Story“
An iPhone, iPod Touch & iPad game created by Paolo Pedercini & Michael Pineschi for Molleindustria in partnership with the Yes Lab.
Banned from the App Store. Google Play archived page here. Play online here. Game website here.

Imagine you’re on Apple’s App Store looking for a new game to play on your iPhone or iPad in September 2011. You see one called Phone Story. Its levels show how your iPhone or iPad were made. The rare metals that make them work so quickly – like Coltan – are extracted from the soil in the Democratic Republic of The Congo by children. The devices are made in a factory in China where the regime is so relentless that workers jump to their deaths from the roof. When a new model comes out, people queue for days and it seems they would run across a busy highway to get to the store before someone else. And then there’s all the e-waste that is generated when the phones that are replaced get thrown away. So, how do you progress through the levels? You’re a soldier who has to bash kids on the back of the head if their Coltan-digging slows. You’re ambulance crew trying to catch workers trying to jump to their deaths from the factory roof. You get the picture. This ‘first anti-iPhone iPhone game’ is hilariously cruel, tasteless, offensive, meta. But it’s 100% based on what’s happening in Apple’s supply chain right now. And what’s more offensive: the game or what it depicts? 901 people pay 99cents and download it. But it’s only available for 4 days, before Apple remove it. People speculate. How on earth did it get there in the first place? And what does its removal mean for free speech? Phone Story went viral as the ‘game Apple didn’t want you to play’. But, you could still play it on your Android phone or computer. You can still do the latter, here. How well would you want to do? What does it mean to get a high score?

Page reference: Eeva Kemppainen, Charlotte Edwards, Toby Bain, Wilhelm Wrede, Sophie Biddulph & Jamie Hall (2012) Phone Story. followthethings.com/phonestory.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 46 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 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, 2024March 21, 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 26, 2025 by Ian Cook

The Messenger Band

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Fashion

“The Messenger Band“
A protest girl band / labour rights NGO including Em [aka Saem] Vun, Leng Leakhana, Chrek Sopha, Nam Sophors, Kao Sochevika, Sothary Kun, Van Huon & others based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
Band profile and selected music videos on YouTube embedded in playlist above. The Messenger Band YouTube channel here & facebook page here.

One of the most fascinating, inspiring examples of creative trade justice activism we have found. Made by garment workers, for garment (and other) workers. In 2005, a labour rights NGO based in Phnom Penh, Cambodia hold a talent concert for women working in the city’s garment factories. They want to form a girl band. Inspired by Bob Marley, it’s called ‘The Messenger Band’ because its songs and performances will carry a message to garment and other workers about their rights. They will write and perform in the style of contemporary Cambodian pop music. Sweet and beautiful songs with choreographed dance routines. But the lyrics will come from their community research with garment and other workers about their lives and struggles, and their knowledge of global trade and labour rights. They will record CDs and music videos to post online, and will perform at local concerts and during labour rights protests. Their audiences will learn the lyrics and sing along. The ‘MB’ wants to empower its audiences to claim their rights and to hold their employers to account. They sing in Khmer for Khmer-speaking audiences. They are not talking to overseas consumers, asking them to do anything to help their situation. They take advantage of the fact that women and performance are not taken seriously by the Cambodian authorities. But they are taken seriously by the working class audiences who love and learn from their music. What they do has a huge impact. Much more impact than a labour rights workshop! Labour rights organisations and NGOs outside Cambodia admire their work. They are an inspiration.

Page reference: Lily Bissell, Grace Hodges, Fran Ravel, Julia Sammut & Ellie Reynolds (2020) The Messenger Band. followthethings.com/the-messenger-band.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 62 minutes.