Posted on

Ghosts

followthethings.com
Grocery

Ghosts
A documentary film written by Nick Broomfield, Jez Lewis & Hsiao-Hung Pai, directed by Nick Broomfield for Beyond FIlms
Official trailer embedded above. Available on Box of Broadcasts (with institutional login) here. Search online here for other streaming availability.

Documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield is known for his quirky, in-front-of-camera documentaries but, after a 2004 disaster where 23 Chinese migrant workers picking cockles were drowned by a fast-incoming tide in the UK’s Morecamble Bay, he decides to make a docu-drama to show what happened and why. This is a tale of people smuggling, modern slavery and violent, corrupt gangmasters sourcing and providing cheap slave labour in the UK to pick vegetables like spring onions and seafood like cockles for sale in mainstream supermarkets (which the film names). It was co-written with Hsiao-Hung Pai – a Taipei-heritage UK journalist and writer – was researched through the writers’ visit to China to visit the victims’ families, starred former illegal immigrant Chinese non-actors working with an improvised script, was filmed where the disaster happened, and ends with a plea for audience members to donate to a fund to help the dead workers’ families pay their people-smuggling debts. The tale is told from the perspective of a female worker called Ai Qin. She and her compatriots speak in Mandarin so that that ‘Ghosts’ – their white gangmasters – can’t understand they are mocking them. In the final scene, just before Ai Qin drowns, she calls her son in China to sing him a farewell song on her mobile phone. Who is to blame for their deaths? The migrant workers? The people smugglers and gangmasters? The supermarkets? The government? This film was made to be put to use, to have a positive impact. On public attitudes to migrant workers. On the law. On the victims’ families. In contrast to a documentary film, a docu-drama can script and film anything, anyone, anywhere. So a fuller picture of the challenges that workers and trade justice activists face can be pieced together to provoke change.

Page reference: Harriet Allen, Etienne Heaume, Lizzie Heeley, Rosie Hedger, Sam Johnson, Olivia McGregor & Lucy Webber (2011) Ghosts. followthethings.com/ghosts.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 51 minutes.

Continue reading Ghosts
Posted on

A Week In A Toxic Waste Dump

followthethings.com
Recycle my waste

A Week In A Toxic Waste Dump
A documentary film starring by Reggie Yates, produced by Harriet Morter for BBC TV.
Available in full above (with ads). Available on the BBC’s iPlayer platform without ads (with login) here. Search online for streaming options here.

“A harrowing new BBC documentary has exposed the continued illegal dumping of e-waste in developing countries. … [Presenter] Reggie [Yates], whose parents were born in Ghana, heads to the country’s capital – Accra – to spend a week living on one of the largest electronic waste dumps in the world. Nicknamed Agbogbloshie, this 20-acre site was established in the 1990s and has grown from a former wetland area with rivers, farms and a lagoon, to one of the most toxic sites on the planet. An electronic graveyard littered with fridges, computers, air conditioning units and TV monitors, the dump sits beneath a permanent plume of thick black smoke. That’s because Agbogbloshie’s ‘burner boys’ – a name given to the manual workers at the very bottom of the chain – burn the waste electronics, which are bought and dismantled in bulk by wholesalers, to salvage precious metals like copper, aluminium and lead. The men, who often work in gangs in strong competition with one another, sell the precious metals on as raw materials. They’re paid in pennies for their efforts and live in extreme poverty – rarely earning enough to move further up the chain – but they’re paying the ultimate price: with their lives” (Source: Anon 2017, np link).

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) A Week In A Toxic Waste Dump (holding page). followthethings.com/a-week-in-a-toxic-waste-dump.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: tbc minutes.

Continue reading A Week In A Toxic Waste Dump
Posted on

Where Heaven Meets Hell

followthethings.com
Grocery | Health & Beauty | Home & Auto |

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.

Continue reading Where Heaven Meets Hell
Posted on

Tackle The Shackles

followthethings.com
Security

Tackle The Shackles
Two protests organised by Reprieve, Amnesty International, Save Omar Campaign & the Birmingham Guantanamo Campaign at Hiatt & Co, 111-115 Baltimore Road, Birmingham, UK (see map) on 8 September 2005 & 11 January 2007.
Selected photographs above. Featured in a scene from the documentary film ‘Taking Liberties since 1997’ (check streaming availability here and start at 1hr 20 minutes).

British citizens and residents are detained in the USA’s Guantanamo Bay detention centre, but none are charged with a crime. They notice the Hiatt & Co. leg irons restraining them are ‘Made in England’, or ‘Made in Birmingham’, just like them. When some go on hunger strike in 2005, and when the 5th anniversary of the camp’s opening takes place in 2007, musicians, doctors, lawyers, comedians and activists protest outside the Birmingham, UK factory where they are made. They dress as Guantanamo inmates and dance the ‘shackle shuffle’ to a live band performing on a flatbed truck. Former detainees, their family members, lawyers, celebrities and activists carry photos of detainees and give speeches. People chain themselves to railings and deliver a cake to the factory. Historically, protestors say, leg irons and other restraints were made in Birmingham to chain enslaved African people in the days of the British Empire. Their use at Guantanamo, they argue, is unethical and illegal. Does the export of these leg irons comply with the UK Government’s obligations under International law? Especially as Hiatt is owned by the UK’s BAE Systems and because the New Labour Government of the time had been loudly trumpeting its ‘ethical’ foreign policy. One detainee’s lawyer says, ‘If an ethical foreign policy means anything, it means not profiting from the torment of our own people.’ The protestors want to make this paradox mainstream news, and they succeed. In this trade justice activism, the violence and exploitation is found not where the commodity of produced, but where it is ‘consumed’. Hiatt closes its Birmingham factory and moves production to the USA. So, does this trade justice activism count as a success?

Page reference: Diana Shifrina (2013) Tackle The Shackles. followthethings.com/tackletheshackles.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 54 minutes.

Continue reading Tackle The Shackles
Posted on

The First Ever Pacemaker To Speak For Itself

followthethings.com
Health & Beauty

The First Ever Pacemaker To Speak For Itself
Undergraduate coursework made and recorded by Jennifer Hart
Images of the pacemaker and packaging submitted is in the slideshow above, the song is embedded below.

The students’ first task in the ‘Geographies of Material Culture’ module at the University of Exeter is to make a personal connection between their lives and the lives of others elsewhere in the world who made the things they buy. These are the people who help you to be you, followthethings.com CEO Ian tells them. So choose a commodity that matters to you, that’s an important part of your identity, that you couldn’t do without. Think about its component parts, its materials, and what properties they give to that commodity and your experience of ‘consuming’ it. Student Jennifer Hart feels guilty about the conflict minerals in her mobile phone. Then she finds that the heart pacemaker her mum is having fitted also contains those minerals. It’s a lifesaving operation. How can she reconcile her mum’s suffering and that of these minerals’ miners? How best can she express her feelings about this technological object? By making a pacemaker that knows what she knows, feels what she feels, and can sing about it. A pacemaker that can express a huge thank you.

Page reference: Jennifer Hart, J. (2014) The First Ever Pacemaker To Speak For Itself. followthethings.com/pacemaker.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated listening & reading time: 10 minutes.

Continue reading The First Ever Pacemaker To Speak For Itself
Posted on

Bright Smiles, Dirty Secrets

followthethings.com
Health & Beauty

Bright Smiles, Dirty Secrets
Undergraduate coursework designed & written by Talisker Alcobia Cornford.
Originally published on the followthethings.com blog here.

Talisker is taking ‘the’Geographies of Material Culture’, the Exeter University module behind our website. At the start of the module, CEO Ian asks everyone to choose an everyday commodity, zero in on one or more of its ingredients, search online for human and other stories of its making, and then experiment with forms of cultural activism to make these relations public. It’s often more interesting to choose something you have absolutely no idea about – he says – no preconceptions about, like something whose ingredients are chemicals, with names you don’t recognise, listed on the packaging in tiny writing that’s hard to read, especially when we use them bleary-eyed, first thing in the morning. Toothpaste is an excellent example. Whose lives are in these kinds of commodities? Talisker culture jams some Colgate ads to add some missing supply chain information to them. But why isn’t her response to simply shop for a different brand? Why’s she making these spoof ads? Who does she want to see them? Where would she like them to be displayed?

Page reference: Talisker Alcobia Cornford (2020) Bright Smiles, Dirty Secrets. followthethings.com/bright-smiles-dirty-secrets.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes.

Continue reading Bright Smiles, Dirty Secrets
Posted on

Santa’s Workshop

followthethings.com
Gifts & Seasonal

Santa’s Workshop
An NGO Report written by Krista Bjurling for Swedwatch and a documentary directed by Lotta Ekelund & Krista Bjurling and produced by Lotta Ekelund for Lotta Films and The Fair Trade Center.
Screenshot slideshow embedded above. Download the report here. Search online to stream the film here.

Swedish toy companies and retailers seem sure that the things they have ‘Made in China’ are produced ethically. But what can they know about working conditions from audit reports and their own factory visits? NGO Swedwatch travels to China to find out, working with local labour activists to write a report and make a short film. What they find may temporarily ruin Christmas, but can it also change the ways that consumers and companies source toys in the future? As one commenter put it, ‘It’s fascinating to watch the blame being pushed around. It’s the worker’s fault, no, it’s the factories’ fault, no, it’s the client’s fault and last but not least, it’s the customer’s fault. The head in the sand attitude is quite remarkable.’ What’s fascinating to us is that, despite one union official in the film asking consumers NOT to stop buying the toys that the workers make, for some audience members that’s the only way to respond. So what other ways can audiences react? How can filmmakers control this? Will there always be audience members who simply want to disengage?

Page reference: Matthew Chambers, Millie Daglish, Sophie Rendell, George Stapleton, Georgie Thompson & Franziska Nuss (2024) Santa’s Workshop. followthethings.com/santasworkshop.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 37 minutes.

Continue reading Santa’s Workshop
Posted on

Machines

followthethings.com
Fashion

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.

Continue reading Machines
Posted on

The Song Of The Shirt

followthethings.com
Fashion

The Song Of The Shirt
A poem written by Thomas Hood, published in Punch magazine.
Original publication in Punch included above.

Curiosity and concern about the poverty of the people who make everyday commodities is as old as capitalism itself. One of the most iconic and influential examples in this genre is a poem called ‘The Song Of The Shirt’ which was published in the satirical British magazine Punch in 1843. This was 24 years before Karl Marx published the first volume of Capital, with its famous opening chapter on the commodity. The subject of the poem is a woman working in East London making linen shirts for the city’s well-to-do men. It contains lines that wouldn’t be out of place in Twenty-First Century trade justice activism: ‘Oh Men, with Sisters dear! O! Men! With mothers and wives! It’s not linen you’re wearing out. But other creatures’ lives’. ‘The Song Of The Shirt’ went viral through the media of its time, being reprinted and discussed in countless newspapers, pamphlets and books across Great Britain and overseas, often with accompanying illustrations of its subject at work. It also crossed over into ‘Song Of The Shirt’ paintings, songs and plays. But how did the poverty of seamstresses come to the surface, here, at this time? How did this poem become so popular and influential? What can we learn from it today?

Page reference: Rachael Midlen & Charlotte Brunton (2014) The Song Of The Shirt (taster). followthethings.com/the-song-of-the-shirt.shtml (last accessed <add date here>)

Estimated reading time: 10 minutes.

Continue reading The Song Of The Shirt
Posted on

Behind The Leather

followthethings.com
Fashion | My Shopping Bag

Behind The Leather
An activist stunt by Ogilvy and Mather Advertising, Bangkok for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) Asia.
YouTube video embedded above.

A new luxury store called ‘Leather Works’ opens at the high end CentralWorld mall in Bangkok selling coats, ties, gloves and bags. Shoppers come in to browse. As they touch and try them on, they see flesh, bones, muscles and sinews inside. As they open the handbags, there are beating hearts too. Shoppers get blood on their hands. This leather was clearly ripped from the bodies of crocodiles, snakes, lizards and other ‘exotic’ animals. It’s like a scene from a horror film. Shoppers recoil in shock. These luxury leather goods are disgusting. The video goes viral. Behind this shopping prank is an NGO called People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and the ad agency Ogilvy & Mather who made it all for them. PETA’s Asia office wants to draw attention to the cruel conditions under which ‘exotic’ animals are farmed and butchered for luxury leather fashion. But how genuine, how ethical, can a ‘hidden camera’ stunt like this be? What can these shock tactics do?

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) Behind The Leather (taster). followthethings.com/behind-the-leather.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes.

Continue reading Behind The Leather