TACTIC: the sterotypical supply chain worker is a poor and powerless victim of capitalist excess that consumers should take care of. But you could show they can, and do, take care of themselves too. They’re rounded people, like everyone.
“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>)
“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>)
“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…
“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>)
“Confessions Of An Eco-Sinner” A non-fiction book by journalist Fred Pearce. Available to preview on Google Books (embedded above).
British journalist Fred Pearce travels 180,000 miles, to over 20 countries, to meet the people who produce (and sometimes recycle) the prawns in his curry, the cotton in his shirt, the computer on his desk, the gold in his wedding ring, and many other things. He wants to explore his own personal ecological footprint, and to work out whether he should be ashamed and/or proud of the impact that his shopping has on the world. This is classic ‘follow the thing’ research. A quest narrative. Starting in the Global North. With a person asking ‘who made my stuff?’ They travel the world to meet the people who they rely upon and then reflect on what this means for them (and maybe you) as a ‘consumer’. This is an approach that critics within the ‘follow the thing’ genre would like to ‘de-centre’. This work could start somewhere else! But what can readers learn from Fred’s travels nonetheless? Is everyone, unknowingly, an eco-sinner like he is? And what can be done to prevent the damage that consumption causes, out of sight and out of mind?
Page reference: Robert Black, Naomi Davies, Tom Mead, Pete Statham, Lucy Taylor and Laura Wilkinson (2011) Confessions Of An Eco-Sinner. followthethings.com/confessions-of-an-ecosinner.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“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>)
“Mardi Gras: Made In China“ A documentary film directed by David Redmon for Carnivalesque Films. First five minutes embedded above. Search online for streaming availability here.
During the Mardi Gras celebrations in New Orleans, USA, a tradition has emerged in which women who bear flesh have strings of plastic beads thrown at them to wear. Filmmaker David Redmon films this revelry and travels to Fuzhou, China to meet the ‘easy to control’ women who make those beads. He films their high speed, low wage, work and returns to New Orleans to show this footage to drunken revellers. He’d done the same thing in Fuzhou, showing the factory workers how the beads they made were ‘consumed’. The film connects women in China making plastic beads for women in the USA to wear, but under very specific, throwaway circumstances. So what were their reactions to seeing these hidden relationships? How did they make sense of this? Or push it to one side? Or find it funny? What happens when labour exploitation meets carnival excess? Where did these beads go afterwards? Who cleaned them up as trash? Why were they sent to US military personnel in Iraq in care packages? And did those factory workers really tell the director that their jobs were fun and well paid? Who can you trust to translate what people tell you? All of these dramas generated heated debate. Not least about trade justice activism like this being a ‘buzzkill’. But what’s the way forward? The film doesn’t suggest one.
Page reference: Grace Chu, Stephanie Hong & Jasmine Lee (2014) Mardi Gras: Made In China. followthethings.com/mardi-gras-made-in-china.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
“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
“Sorry We Missed You“ A feature film written by Paul Laverty & directed by Ken Loach for 12 production companies including BBC Films & Canal+. Official trailer embedded above. Search online to streaming options here.
‘Ricky and his family have been fighting an uphill struggle against debt since the 2008 financial crash. An opportunity to wrestle back some independence appears with a shiny new van and the chance to run a franchise as a self employed delivery driver. It’s hard work, and his wife’s job as a carer is no easier. The family unit is strong but when both are pulled in different directions everything comes to breaking point’ (Source: Anon 2019, np link).
Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) Sorry We Missed You (holding page). followthethings.com/sorry-we-missed-you.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)
