Show capitalist evils – followthethings.com

“Letter from Masanjia”
Documentary film starring Sun Yi, directed by Leon Lee, co-written by Sun Yi, Leon Lee & Caylan Ford, in English & Mandarin with English subtitles.
Vimeo trailer and pay per view stream embedded above [may not work in your region]. Check here and here for other streaming options, and here to purchase and here to borrow a DVD or Blu-ray copy [may not work in your region].

One of the earliest examples of trade justice activism that we researched and added to our store was a letter that went viral in 2012 [it’s here]. Oregon, USA shopper Julie Keith had found a one page handwritten note in a box of Kmart Halloween decorations. It was a ‘message in a bottle’ from a prison labour camp in China. It asked her to forward it to the World Human Rights organisation, because these decorations had been made by political prisoners who were being tortured and forced to make these things. The letter was anonymous. She posted a photo of it on facebook asking for help. Soon, the story of the letter was featured in her local newspaper, and was picked up by international news outlets like CNN and the New York Times. They were eager to expose the scandal and to find the person who had written it. The New York Times found him: they called him ‘Mr Zhang’ who was no longer in jail. But the story then reached China via an online post – published and quickly deleted – that caused outrage on Chinese social media. Writing that letter had had the most amazing impact. Doing what its author had asked had had the most amazing impact. China’s ‘Re-education Through Labour’ programme was abolished, and 160,000 political prisoners were released from its prison labour camps. But the New York Times journalist wasn’t the only person who found the author. A Chinese filmmaker living in Canada called Leon Lee had also tracked him down. The author had watched his banned-in-China documentary about the human organ trade in China via a VPN connection. For that film, Leon Lee had interviewed former inmates of the notorious Masanjia labour camp where the author had been incarcerated. He’d used his contacts from making that film to find him. Lee talked to him via an encrypted Skype call. They decided to make a film about the letter, the labour camps, and political repression in China. But Lee was barred from China. If he’d travelled there, he’d have ended up in jail, or worse. So he trained the letter’s author – now happy to use his name Sun Yi – in covert filmmaking techniques, and how to smuggle encrypted hard drives to Canada to get the footage to Lee to make the film. The film that Lee made – Letter from Masanjia – had two parts: one looked back on the story of Sun Yi’s incarceration, decoration-making, letter writing and smuggling (illustrated by cartoons Sun Yi drew himself), and the other documented his ongoing persecution by the state after release for his past and continued activism (including making this film). When letter from Masanjia came out, it was a sensation. The plot was so unbelievable, so i-have-no-idea-what-will-happen-next, so emotionally complex, that it had to be true. Festival audiences around the world were blown away. It’s a classic ‘follow the thing’ narrative – people in other parts of the world make the things that Western consumers buy in horrible conditions. Here, however, the worker is in the narrative’s driving seat, first writing and smuggling the letter, and then filming (and drawing) the story that’s edited for release. The risks he has taken, and the calm, determined demeanour he shows in the process, amaze the film’s audiences. As does the meeting that takes place between him and Julie Keith in Jakarta, which ends the film. As does Sun Yi’s death in suspicious circumstances at the end of the filming. As well as being a hugely emotional producer-meets-consumer story, and a hugely brave and tragic success story of trade justice activism, Letter to Masanjia message is both anti-capitalist and anti-communist. There’s something in it for everyone. Any exposé of something ‘Made in China’ can do that. It generated tons of discussion and debate, which we’ve tried to capture below. This Halloween tale is incredibly scary.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2025) Letter from Masanjia. followthethings.com/letter-from-masanjia.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 123 minutes.

Posted on July 31, 2025September 9, 2025 by Ian Cook

Following the white phosphorus trail

followthethings.com
Security

2009

UNBRANDED

WHITE PHOSPHORUS ARTILLERY SHELL

SHOW MILITARY INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX EVILS

CROSS CULTURES

CHANGE GOVERNMENT BEHAVIOUR

END VIOLENCE & EXPLOITATION

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

INCLUDE SUFFERING KIDS

“Following the white phosphorus trail”
A series of four TV news stories broadcast on Al Jazeera English.
Embedded in the YouTube playlist above.

‘Follow the things’ trade justice activism tends to connect unknowing consumers to the exploited supply chain workers who make the things they buy. But not when it comes to the arms trade. Here, the direction of travel is reversed: it’s this industry’s ultimate ‘consumers’ – the people who are killed and maimed by these commodities – that activists are worried about, especially when their use can be considered a war crime. Since Hamas’ October 7th 2023 attack on Israel and the Israeli government’s military response (described by many, and denied by Israel, as a genocide), arms trade activists around the world have set out to make public the geographies of the arms trade supplying the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) and to disrupt this via non-violent direct action. They have also sought to hold arms manufacturers, shipping companies, Israeli and other goverments, and the IDF accountable for their actions under international law. But who are the people who make these weapons, where in the world? What do they know about the devastating impacts of their work? How do they feel about this? How do they rationalise it? Who’s responsible for this death and destruction? Soon after Hamas’ October 7th attack, news reports emerged that accused the IDF of using white phosphorus shells to bomb civilians in Gaza and Lebanon. These shells are designed to light up the sky, and/or to provide a smokecreen, for ground troops to more safely move into an area. That’s their permitted use. But if they’re used to bomb people, that’s a war crime. White phosphorus burns when it comes into contact with oxygen, and it keeps burning for weeks. It’s fat soluble so, if it lands on people’s skin, it burns and burns. Journalists and arms trade activists could identify where these white phosphorus shells were made from production codes they found on fragments of the shells found in burning ruins. An arsenal in the small town of Pine Bluff, Arkansas, USA, was the source. And not for the first time. In 2008-9, white phosphorus shells from the Pine Bluff Arsenal had been dropped on Palestinian civilians during the IDF’s ‘Operation Cast Lead’. The Quatari news station Al Jazeera sent a reporter there and broadcast at least four news stories that followed the trail of white phosphorus munitions there from Gaza. Reporter Mike Kirsch talked to locals, showed them images of Palestinian people burned by munitions made in their town, asked them what they felt about this, asked their mayor what he felt about this. There was a detailed Amnesty International report that he could show them. Were people in this town at least partially responsible for this death and destruction? Was the Arsenal responsible? Was the US government responsible? The IDF? Hamas? Here’s what we have been able to find.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2025) Following the white phosphorus trail. followthethings.com/following-the-white-phosphorus-trail.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 53 minutes.

Posted on June 28, 2025July 2, 2025 by Ian Cook

Barbie’s Dirty Secrets

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Gifts & Seasonal

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

CHANGE CORPORATE BEHAVIOUR

IMPROVE PAY & CONDITIONS

TARGET THE RIGHT BRAND

HOLD ‘EM ACCOUNTABLE

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

START WITH A PARADOX

JUXTAPOSE EXTREMES

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

EMBODY EXPLOITATION

SHOW THE VIOLENCE

BLAME, SHAME AND GUILT

JOIN WITH OTHERS?

MAKE IT AVAILABLE

“Barbie’s Dirty Secrets“
A documentary film presented by Isobel Yeung, and produced by Alasdair Glennie for Zandland, first broadcast on Channel 4, UK.
Available on YouTube, embedded above.

Journalist Isobel Yeung latches onto worldwide success of the 2023 Barbie movie and its feminist critique of the toy industry to ask about the lives of the women who make these dolls in factories in China. She drives around Los Angeles in a Barbie pink Jeep, picking up expert passengers who know about Mattel – the LA-headquartered company that makes and markets this doll – and about the wealth enjoyed by its CEO Ynon Kreiz. These scenes are intercut with Yeung’s phone calls to a fixer in China who is tasked to get an undercover reporter into a Barbie factory wearing a hidden camera. This reporter lasts just one day handling scolding hot plastic Barbie limbs with her bare hands, and is withdrawn for her own health and wellbeing. A second undercover reporter then gets a job assembling plastic figures from a forthcoming Disney Moana movie. He seems to last a day or two, unable to meet rising quotas for new employees, but he captures conversations with his co-workers about life and work in the factory. This undercover footage is shown to a representative of a labour rights NGO who is horrified by the violations that she sees. The film then shifts its attention to another Mattel brand – Fisher Price – and a dangerous cot which has been linked to the deaths of babies, and legal cases against the company. [We don’t detail this below, because we are interested in the way that this film connect the labour, marketing and consumption of Barbie dolls]. Our website has documented many landmark examples of trade justice activism when it was new – from the late 1990s in particular – and when it could have shock value and noticeable impact. Audiences in the 2020s, however, seem no longer to be shocked to find labour exploitation at the end of a supply chain. Corporations are better set up to handle the damage that such revelations may or may not do to their reputations and sales. And ‘trade justice activism’ like this is now pitched by production companies to broadcasters as a form of ‘buzzy’ media content. But, for us, there are glimmers of a more complex theory of change at work here. Less than a week after Barbie’s dirty secrets was broadcast, a China Labor Watch report was published that detailed exploitative and dangerous factory conditions in Barbie factories in China. Isobel Yeung refers to such a report in the film. The role that Barbie’s dirty secrets therefore had, we speculate, was to work alongside this NGO research, to make the report’s findings public, and to connect accusations of Mattel’s feminist corporate hypocrisy through the same media as the Barbie movie: film. Should anyone studying trade justice activism expect to final any single example having an impact in and of itself? No. And is possible to follow just one thing? It doesn’t look like it here. Check the comments below.

Page reference: Lucian Harford (2025) Barbie’s Dirty Secrets. followthethings.com/barbies-dirty-secrets.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 44 minutes.

Posted on March 20, 2025April 3, 2025 by Ian Cook

Chocolate: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

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Grocery | Gifts & Seasonal

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

SHOW WHAT’S POSSIBLE

CHANGE CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

INVOLVE A CELEBRITY

TARGET THE RIGHT BRANDS

BRING A MANAGER INTO VIEW

INCLUDE SUFFERING KIDS

SHOW THE VIOLENCE

FIND & GIVE INSPIRATION

ENCOURAGE A BUYCOTT

MAKE IT AVAILABLE

“Chocolate: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)“
A monologue by John Oliver on his Last Week Tonight show broadcast in the USA on HBO.
Full monologue posten on YouTube embedded above.

Satirist John Oliver is delivering his weekly monologue on late night American TV. It’s the day before halloween, where millions of chocolate sweets will be given to children knocking on doors in scary costumes [see our ‘Gifts & seasonal’ department for other Halloween examples]. But what’s scarier is the fact that the cocoa in that chocolate was probably picked by children in the Ivory Coast and Ghana in West Africa. Despite longstanding critiques of child labour in chocolate’s supply chains; despite legislation being passed to remove it; despite the major brands’ own schemes to eliminate it, child labour – and the modern slavery that often supplies it – persists in an industry that continues to make multi-$£billion profits. Oliver’s monologue is about consumers’ love of chocolate and the corporate evils that feed it. He combines acerbic takes on the chocolate corporations’ social responsibility rhetoric and advertising practices (including the distractions of a ‘f*@kable’ green M&M) with footage of filmmakers meeting children who pick cocoa, their families and communities. One clip of a Dutch journalist’s ‘gotcha’ moment with a Nestlé executive is particularly powerful. Admitting that coca farming communities suffered poverty and that’s why children had to work, the man from Nestlé abruptly ends the call when asked why he doesn’t just pay them more. That journalist went on to start his own ‘slave free’ chocolate company – Tony’s Chocolonely – which Oliver holds up as an exemplar. The chocolate business can work differently, because it is working differently. What’s needed to help this along – Oliver says – is regulatory change. With each episode of his show published on YouTube; with his use of humour to make depressing topics palatable to viewers; and with his championing of Tony’s – this was a provocative show. Commenters shared how much they loved Tony’s Chocolonely too, or that they were going to try some as a result of watching the show. Others criticised the writers for parroting Tony’s marketing materials, and pointed out that its journalist founder had left because Tony’s couldn’t make slave-free chocolate. Others said that other, more ethical, chocolate brands were available if you knew where to look. But, people chipped in, shopping differently isn’t the only way to tackle trade injustice. Trade justice can be achieved only via multiple forms of pressure, from multiple angles, constantly. And Oliver’s monologue didn’t help. Chocolate researchers criticised it for being full of the usual stereotypes. Cocoa farmers have never eaten chocolate? Nope. They may just pretend not to have eaten it for gullible Western filmmakers. And the writers bypassed – like most coverage does – those in producer countries who are trying to make a positive difference. For Oliver, it’s the Western brands and consumers who can save the day by acting more ethically. Yes, that’s very important. But it’s not enough. Can there be ethical consumption under capitalism? That’s the bigger question. It’s what everyone’s talking about here.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2025) Chocolate: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO). followthethings.com/chocolate-last-week-tonight-with-john-oliver-hbo.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 78 minutes.

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

Red Dust

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Electronics | Home & Auto

RECHARGEABLE BATTERIES

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

SHOW WHAT’S POSSIBLE

CHANGE CITIZEN BEHAVIOUR

FLIP THE SCRIPT!

FIND & GIVE INSPIRATION

PROMPT GOOD CITIZENSHIP

“Red Dust“
A documentary film directed by Karin Mak in Mandarin and Sichuanhua with English subtitles
Trailer embedded above. Watch in full on Labournet TV here. Website here.

A woman called Ren leaves beautiful rural Sichuan, China to work in a nickel-cadmium rechargeable battery factory in the city of Huizhou. Thousands of women like her do this. It’s an exciting opportunity to life yourself and your family back home out of poverty. But it creates the kind of pool of surplus cheap labour that attracts foreign investors. After years working at a GP factory making batteries for Wa-Mart, Mattel and Toys R Us, Ren and her workmates have been poisoned by the red cadmium dust in the air. They aren’t told that there’s a risk that this could poison their internal organs, leave them breathless, give them frequent headaches and cause them to endure chronic pain. There’s no protective equipment. This poisoning affects what they can do with their lives, including whether it’s safe to have children. And the medicines are expensive, especially when your pay is so low. There’s a striking contract here between disposable workers and reusable batteries. Chinese female workers have historically been stereotyped as quiet and passive, but Ren and her workmates behave assertively in response to what’s happened to them. This is what attract’s American filmmaker Karin Mak to their story. She follows Ren and her friends Min, Fu and Wu as they find out more about cadmium poisoning, gather evidence and demand justice from local government and the battery manufacturer. What’s distinctive about this film is that it’s an early example of trade justice documentary filmmaking that humanises Chinese workers, and shows their resistance to the low pay and dangerous working conditions that are so well known otherwise. It doesn’t start from a consumer perspective. And it asks its viewers to take action, not as consumers but as citizens who can write to GP batteries. The text of the letter can be copied from the film’s website. This is Karin Mak’s thesis film, part of her studies in social documentation at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She’s the filmmaker who worked with SACOM to make their Those With Justice film (on our site here) three years previously. She’s not making this for mainstream consumption. She’s not worrying about its funding. She wants to portray these women’s struggles vividly and sympathetically.

Page reference: Alex Alonso, David Tagle and Jennifer Reis (2011) Red Dust. followthethings.com/red-dust.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 15 minutes.

Posted on December 20, 2024February 11, 2025 by Ian Cook

A Gadget To Die For

followthethings.com
Electronics

“A Gadget To Die For“
Front page headline and feature story in by Martin Hickman in the Independent Newspaper, plus a timeline of corporate and activist activity into which this story fits.
Front page featured above. The full text of the article is available below, and on the newspaper website here.

On May 27th 2010, the UK’s Independent newspaper published one of its most memorable front pages. This was the day that Apple’s new iPad device was being launched in the UK. The hype for this product had been extreme. At its launch, Apple CEO Steve Jobs had said it could help consumers to do things ‘in a much more intimate, intuitive and fun way than ever before’. Classic commodity fetishism! Apple Stores had so many orders that they had to meet. The factory where they were being made in China – owned by the Foxconn corporation – had to keep up with demand. Those customers couldn’t be kept waiting. But the hours and working conditions that the people making these iPads in Foxconn’s factory had to endure were too much for some. Reports started to emerge of extreme levels of stress driving some workers to make their way to the roof of the factory to jump to their deaths. One of these workers was Ma Xiangqian, whose family carried a photo portrait of their son to a protest outside the factory that was broadcast on international news. Juxtaposing a photo of this new device and photo of a worker who committed suicide with the perfect double-meaning title ‘A gadget to die for’ contributed to the sullying of Apple’s marketing plans. More importantly, it was just one example of the sustained attention to the working conditions in the company’s Foxconn factories in China that was building at this time (e.g. see the factory worker suicide prevention level on the Phone Story game here). On followthethings.com, we tend to choose individual examples of trade justice activism and find out where they came from, and what impacts they have had on, for example, the pay and conditions of supply chain workers. But in this case, it’s not just this one story that made a difference. This page outlines a different story. The Independent story is copied in full, and is followed – like a standard followthethings.com page – by everything we could find about how it was discussed and what impact it had (not much). Then, below this, we try to place this news story in context, starting with the launch of the iPad by Apple CEO Steve Jobs, then following iPad news stories as they were published over the following months, then finding when and how the ‘iPad suicide’ story came to public attention (in the Independent and elsewhere), and then tracking this scandal and Apple’s reactions to it. This larger context had an important impact, forcing corporate change and – arguably – improving pay and conditions in Foxconn factories. More than anything, this page tries to show how trade justice activism works when its bubbles up in multiple places and formats, not necessarily in a wholly coordinated way. For this example, it shows the importance of on-the-ground student activists – in this case the Hong Kong based Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM) – investigating, protesting, creating and promoting media content that others – like Independent journalists Martin Hickman – can pick up and run with.

Article reference: Martin Hickman (2010) A gadget to die for? Concern over human cost overshadows iPad launch. The Independent 27 May (www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/concern-over-human-cost-overshadows-ipad-launch-1983888.html last accessed 4 August 2010)

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2024) A gadget to die for? followthethings.com/a-gadget-to-die-for.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 42 minutes.

Posted on December 17, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Sim*Sweatshop

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Sport & Fitness

2006

UNBRANDED

SPORTS SHOES

MADE IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

REACH NEW AUDIENCES

CHANGE CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

MAKE THE HIDDEN VISIBLE

ENCOURAGE EMPATHY

EMBODY EXPLOITATION

BRING MANAGERS INTO VIEW

“Sim*Sweatshop“
An online video game by Jonny Norridge (concept and game programming) & Gavin Courtney (back end development) for NOW Nottingham and The Arts Council UK.
Gameplay video by WahWahQueenMew embedded above. Available to play free of charge on the Sim*Sweatshop website here (Adobe Flash needed).

Designer Jonny Norridge creates a game to simulate the experience of the shoe factory work that he’s been reading about. You slide shoe panels into place with your mouse. It ‘pings’ when one’s made. Then you make the next one. The clock ticks. Your energy levels fall. Your pay is terrible. It’s not enough to buy the food that you and your family need. You are interrupted by your boss talking about targets. He doesn’t like it when you want to join a union. It’s a simple, repetitive game that you – as a factory worker – can’t win. The idea is to put gamers in the shoes of the people who make the things that they buy. For them, there’s a familiar task sequence and reward structure. But this is real. It’s kind of fun to play, but also sucks. It’s the kind of game that’s given to school students as a quick and vivid way to explain sweatshop production. If they hate it, the lesson has worked. For those who want to know more, its website suggests further reading. There are other examples of trade justice activism in which consumers go to work in the factories and farms where their things are made (see, for example, the TV series Blood, Sweat & Takeaways on our site here). With these, you’re invited to empathise with someone supposedly like you – the contestants are often pitched ‘as typical’ consumers – trying to do that work. In this game, you’re all doing it yourself. So how effectively can a game-based simulation of factory work can be? What can it convey of the poverty and working conditions of show factory workers? It turn out that the answer is ‘a lot’. Sim*Sweatshop catches on. German and Hungarian versions are created, and it becomes part of other mainstream anti-sweatshop campaigns. But are young consumers the ones responsible for these sweatshop conditions? Should company executives, investors and politicians be playing this game too?

Page reference: Declan Coakley, Jack Johnson, Josh Li, Georgie Mitchell, Jack Saxton & Tom Weake (2024) Pipe Trouble. followthethings.com/sim-sweatshop.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 25 minutes.

Posted on December 13, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Tangled Routes: Women, Work And Globalization On The Tomato Trail

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Grocery

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

CHOOSE THE RIGHT THING

KNOW YOUR HISTORY

FIND SOME CHARACTERS

SPEND SOME TIME

CULTIVATE RELATIONSHIPS

MAKE IT TOGETHER

HUMANISE WORKERS

ENCOURAGE FEMINIST SOLIDARITIES

ENCOURAGE EMPATHY

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

JUXTAPOSE EXTREMES

TELL A STORY

“Tangled Routes: Women, Work And Globalization On The Tomato Trail“
An academic book written by Deborah Barndt published by Rowman & Littlefield
2007 second edition Google Books preview embedded above. Search online to buy a copy here.

In 1994, preparing to do some undergraduate teaching, Environmental Studies professor Deborah Barndt finds a popular educational tool called A whirlwind tour of economic integration with your guide, Tomasita the tomato. She thinks this fictional tomato is the perfect etrée for her students’ understanding of cross-border trade – in this case from Mexico to Canada – and the often confusing complexities of globalisation – including messy relations between corporate power, genetically modified seeds, pesticides, stolen indigenous land, exploited peasant labour and environmental racism. What follows is a 5 year feminist participatory research project – called the Tomasita Project – which connects the lives of tomato growers, truckers, checkout workers and other supply chain workers living and working in Mexico and Canada. What she discovers and tries to convey is the clash between a ‘globalisation from above’ – the uniform, genetically-engineered, neoliberal, NAFTA-friendly tomato trade – and ‘globalisation from below’ – grass roots social justice projects working across borders and producing alternative foods. As Tomasita explained when Barndt first saw her story, the tomato is an iconic crop in the Americas. A brilliant one to follow, loading with meanings. It was native to South America, was first domesticated in Mexico, is central to the diets in Mexico, the USA and Canada, can be grown (at least seasonally) in all three countries, and was ‘one of the winners for Mexico in the NAFTA reshuffle’ (Barndt 2002a, p.82). What readers value the most is her book’s ‘feminist act’ that makes visible women workers in the global food system, and the way that it brings feminist theories into understandings of international trade. We researched this book early in its life (in 2011) and are keen to return to it to flesh out this page one day. This is an early, innovative, important and inspiring example of ‘follow the thing’ scholar-activism.

Page reference: Robert Conor Burke (2024) Tangled Routes: Women, Work And Globalization On The Tomato Trail. followthethings.com/tangled-routes-women-work-and-globalization-on-the-tomato-trail.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 20 minutes.

Posted on December 11, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Maquilapolis (City Of Factories)

followthethings.com
Home & Auto | Health & Beauty

MULTIPLE OTHER BRANDS

MANY OTHER COMMODITIES

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

EDUCATE WORKERS

START SOMEWHERE DIFFERENT

WORKERS TAKE THE MIC!

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

SHOW THE VIOLENCE

INCLUDE SUFFERING KIDS

BRING POLITICIANS INTO VIEW

SHOW HOW TO WIN

FIND & GIVE INSPIRATION

ENCOURAGE FEMINIST SOLIDARITIES

“Maquilapolis (City Of Factories)“
A participatory documentary film in Spanish with Spanish or English subtitles directed by Vicky Funari & Sergio de la Torre, with music by Pauline Oliveros with the Nortec Collective & John Blue for the Independent Television Service & CineMamás Film.
Trailer and pay-per-view stream embedded above. Search online for other streaming options here. Read the film transcript in English & Spanish here.

Carmen Duràn and Lourdes Lujàn work in Tijuana, the ‘city of factories’, on the Mexico-US border. They work in factories on the hill making televisions and other COMMODITIES for brands like Panasonic and Sony. These multinationals treat this city as a garbage can that their workers have to live in. How can they fight back, claim their rights, their humanity? They take part in a participatory filmmaking project with directors Vicky Funari and Sergio de la Torre. The directors have been working with a local collective of ‘promontoras’ including Carmen and Lourdes for years. They have planned this project together for years. There’s been some filmmaking training and the promontoras take camcorders into the places where they live and work. The films they make are full of personality and a close attachment to place. They document life from these factory workers’ perspective. They document the ways in which these multinationals treat them as workers – especially when they leave – and how they treat the place where they live – as a dump for industrial waste that ruins their environment and threatens their health. They document their campaigns to clean up toxic industrial waste. In the process audiences get to know Carmen and Lourdes, to empathise with them. But the film also contains some surprising and beautiful creative scenes – often made in place of the footage that’s impossible to take inside the factory – that look like performance art. They want to show the intimate, bodily connection between the labour they perform, the commodities you buy (or are treated with in hospital) and the brands that you may be familiar with. And there’s some specially commissioned film music, made with a local music collective and featuring sounds from the factories. This is a gem of a film for anyone interested in trade justice activism. This is the film – with caveats – that these Mexican factory workers wanted to make and to show to the world. It’s one of the most intimate place-based examples featured on our site. And it was shown, deliberately, to audiences of workers either side of the US-Mexico border. Seeing empowered women like themselves struggling, resisting was an inspiration to many other women. And when the film hit the film festival circle, and there were panel screenings, the promontoras were there, answering questions alongside the directors.

Page reference: Rosie Buller, Melanie Bonner, Rebecca Lyons, Georgie Little, Tilman Schulzklinger & Jennifer Hart (2020) Maquilapolis (City Of Factories). followthethings.com/maquilapolis-city-of-factories.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 86 minutes.

Posted on December 11, 2024January 28, 2025 by Ian Cook

Inside Job

followthethings.com
Money & Finance

EXPERIENCED WORLDWIDE

DOCUMENTARY FILM

SHOW CAPITALIST EVILS

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

FOLLOW THE MONEY

FIND THE CHARACTERS

INCLUDE EMOTION

BRING MANAGERS INTO VIEW

BRING REGULATORS INTO VIEW

BRING ACADEMICS INTO VIEW

JOIN THE DOTS

JUXTAPOSE EXTREMES

INVOLVE A CELEBRITY

PLACE THINGS CAREFULLY

BLAME, SHAME & GUILT

“Inside Job“
A documentary film directed by Charles Ferguson, produced by Charles Ferguson, Audrey Marrs & Jeffrey Lurie & narrated by Matt Damon for Mongrel Media & Sony Pictures Classic.
Official trailer embedded above. Search online to watch the full movie here.

In the wake of the Global Financial Crisis of 2008, filmmaker Charles Ferguson sets out to find out how and by whom it was caused. This involves understanding and explaining complex financial instruments (like sub-prime mortgages and collateralised debt obligations), the governance of international finance and its deregulation (and its consequences), eye-watering banking losses (over $20 trillion), the organisations and individuals responsible for this happening (in financial services, government, academia) and the people plunged into poverty and homelessness after defaulting on their mortgages. The complexity is explained clearly in the film by narrator Matt Damon. And by the talking heads who Ferguson recruits to talk about what happened, their role in it, how they see their responsibilities, why so much public money was spent bailing them out, and why none of them went to jail. For many audience members, it’s shocking to see executives explaining how business works on camera. The logics and passions that drive their work, and the values that they express, can seem removed from the world, callous and dehumanising. But the experts who come out of this film looking worst are the academic economists. One of the biggest impacts of this film is the way that it encourages university business schools to look more closely at their ethics. Who are economists working for, and how responsible is their education of new generations of economists if their ideas remain unchanged after the Crisis? This is another example showing how important and how difficult it is to ‘follow the money’. But like any following study, it’s also about the ways that responsibility – in this case, for a colossal economic injustice – is understood, shared, taken. And where it isn’t. The solution sees obvious to many – regulation! But it’s not happening. If one film was going to cause a revolution, one commentor states, it would be this one. And this is just a taster page for this film. We’ll add much more detail later…

Page reference: Dom Ebbetts, Dave Simpson, Michael Brent, Mickey Franklin, Tommy Sadler & Charlie Timms (2024) Inside Job (taster). followthethings.com/inside-job.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 12 minutes.