Tag: Show the violence

TEACH ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

EDUCATE WORKERS

WORKERS TAKE THE MIC!

BRING POLITICIANS INTO VIEW

INCLUDE SUFFERING KIDS

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 4, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Those With Justice: A Disney Factory In China (+ Looking For Mickey Mouse’s Conscience – A Survey Of The Working Conditions Of Disney’s Supplier Factories in China)

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Gifts & Seasonal

CHANGE CORPORATE BEHAVIOUR

IMPROVE PAY & CONDITIONS

FLIP THE SCRIPT!

TARGET THE RIGHT BRAND

HUMANISE THINGS

INCLUDE HAUNTING & HORROR

PUT YOUR BODIES IN THE WAY

BRING MANAGERS INTO VIEW

PROMPT GOOD CITIZENSHOP

BARGAIN & NEGOTIATE

“Those With Justice: A Disney Factory In China (+ Looking For Mickey Mouse’s Conscience – A Survey Of The Working Conditions Of Disney’s Supplier Factories in China)“
A short film directed by Karin Mak and translated by Jessie Wang for, and an NGO Report published by, Students & Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (SACOM) & Sweatshop Watch.
Watch the film in full above. Read the report – here.

Inspired by student anti-sweatshop activism in the USA, students in Hong Kong come together to protest the opening of Hong Kong’s Disneyland. They visit the factories where the Disney merch that is going to be sold there is made. They talk to the factory workers, and are horrified by what they learn. There are dangerous and exploitative labour practices behind the happy smiling image of Mickey Mouse and Friends. One group of students – who call themselves Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehaviour (or SACOM) – write a report about the working conditions in four of Disney’s hundreds of Chinese supplier factories. It’s called Looking for Mickey Mouse’s Conscience – A Survey of the Working Conditions of Disney’s Supplier Factories in China. They do this with the help of a California-based NGO called Sweatshop Watch, who send a delegation to China which includes University of California Santa Cruz film studies student Karin Mak. Mak films the factory workers talking about these working conditions, and produces an 11 minute documentary called Those With Justice: A Disney Factory In China. This focuses on one of the four factories – Hung Hing Printing & Packaging – which makes children’s books for Disney. Here, she finds, the workers are constantly reminded about the delicate fingers of Western children. They mustn’t be harmed by paper cuts. That’s why they have to use dangerous hot glue presses to stick the paper covers to hardback copies of a Mickey Mouse’s Haunted Halloween book, for example. The film and the report show images of their burned, crushed and mangled fingers. These injuries are caused by equipment and the speed at which they have to work to meet their targets. Mak’s film is used by SACOM and Sweatshop Watch (and other labour rights NGOs) to launch the report. It helps this Disney sweatshop story to get traction in the international new media. Now Disney is under pressure to respond. What follows is a fascinating to-and-fro between a huge multinational corporation and a small, determined, skilful and well-connected group of Hong Kong students. This is a fascinating and important example of successful trade justice activism. Piecing the story together below, we have found a variety of factors that have contributed to this success – some planned, some not – and a fascinating discussion about what counts as ‘success’.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2011) Those With Justice: A Disney Factory In China (+ Looking For Mickey Mouse’s Conscience – A Survey Of The Working Conditions Of Disney’s Supplier Factories in China). followthethings.com/those-with-justice.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 56 minutes.

Posted on December 4, 2024January 10, 2025 by Ian Cook

‘I Found This In A Box Of Halloween Decorations’ (+ Letter from Masanjia)

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Gifts & Seasonal

2013

2018

KMART

HALLOWEEN DECORATIONS

CHANGE GOVERNMENT BEHAVIOUR

CHANGE CITIZEN BEHAVIOUR

FLIP THE SCRIPT!

WORKERS TAKE THE MIC!

INCLUDE HAUNTING & HORROR

CHOOSE AN AUDIENCE

HUMANISE THINGS

PUT A MESSAGE IN A BOTTLE

ASK FOR HELP

FIND THE CHARACTERS

EMBODY EXPLOITATION

TRANSLATE & SUBTITLE

FIND LOST RELATIONS

BRING PEOPLE TOGETHER

FIND THE LOVE

LET THE TEARS FLOW

“‘I Found This In A Box Of Halloween Decorations’ (+ Letter from Masanjia)”
A letter written by ‘Mr Zhang’ (Sun Yi) in a Chinese prison factory and found in a box of Kmart Halloween decorations bought in Oregon, USA by Julie Keith (+ a documentary film starring Sun Yi and Julie Keith directed and produced by Leon Lee for Flying Cloud Productions).
Letter posted online by Julie Keith, reproduced in ‘Letter From Masanjia (trailer embedded above). Search online to watch the documentary here.

In 2013, shopper Julie Keith is unpacking a box of styrofoam Halloween decorations she bought from her local K-Mart. In between the ghoulish plastic gravestones, she finds a folded-up letter. It’s written in English by someone who says that they’re a prison factory worker in China who has helped to make this product. They give the address of the prison (called Masanjia) and say that its inmates work long hours and have been tortured, beaten and insulted. It asks its recipient to forward the letter to the ‘World Human Rights Organisation’. Julie thinks it’s genuine and posts o photo of the letter on her facebook with the caption ‘I found this in a box of Halloween decorations’. It gets a flurry of responses. Is it genuine? What should she do with it? There isn’t a ‘World Human Right Organisation’. The discussions spread. The post is shared many times. Soon it’s being reported on the local TV news. Next it’s a global news story. Who is this person? How did they write this note? How did they smuggle it into a box of Halloween decorations? How many letters did they write? What did they hope would happen? What danger were they in for doing this? Can journalists find the author and verify the story? And, most importantly, why are ‘made in China’ goods coming from factory labour? Isn’t that illegal? Next, this story is picked up by a documentary filmmaker who tries to answer these questions, and more. He find the author, now out of prison but still living in China. They film secretly. Sun Yi is not only the best travel guide but – helpfully – is also a cartoonist who draws the scenes of his captivity and factory labour to add unfilmable footage to the documentary. The filmmaker arranges for the Sun Yi and Julie Keith to meet in person. It’s an emotionally charged scene. She hands him the letter, they talk about their connected lives and the impact that the story about their connection has had on both of them. They are so happy to see eachother. They seem to care deeply about one another because, together, they have accidentally (her) and on purpose (him) become trade justice activists. They agree that they’re doing the right thing. But what are the consequences? He sought to expose this system of prison labour in China, but she didn’t. It’s illegal to import goods into the USA that are made with forced labour. That’s hugely problematic for the Chinese prison factory complex. So it’s hugely risky for him as the person who was instrumental in exposing this, helping to turn it into an international news story by hopefully writing a letter to an unknown consumer that asked for help. For us, this is an extraordinary example of trade justice activism because of its documentation (there’s so much!) and its impacts (so huge, unexpected and sad).

NB – this page currently focuses on the letter and will be updated to add details about the film.

Page reference: Harry Marriot, Alex Partington, William Finley, Milly Bowen, Sarah Murray & Jenny Sharp (2014) ‘I Found This In A Box Of Halloween Decorations’ (+ Letter from Masanjia). followthethings.com/i-found-this-in-a-box-of-halloween-decorations.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 34 minutes.

Posted on December 2, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Step Away From The Weapon

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Security

“Step Away From The Weapon“
Undergraduate coursework written by Ginny Childs, originally published on followtheblog.org here.
Full text below.

In the version of the ‘Geographies of Material Culture’ module that was first taught at the University of Exeter, groups of students were given books, music videos, films and other example of trade justice activism to research. Their job was to produce draft pages on these sources for the followthethings.com website. Ginny Childs was in a group researching Indian rap artist Sofia Ahraf’s ‘Dow vs Bhopal: A Toxic Rap Battle’ music video [see this page in our website here]. Ginny wasn’t born when the Bhopal factory exploded in 1984 but, as a member of the university’s Office Training Corps, she notices stringent rules about toxic chemical leaks in her rifle drills. While thousands of people of Bhopal had been poisoned by Methyl Isocyanate, she was at risk from a tiny dose of the radioactive hydrogen isotope called tritium that was in her rifle battlesight. The safety procedures in place if that leaked its tritium are stringent. So she investigates the safety procedures the Union Carbide factory in Bhopal in the 1980s and wonders if she’s benefitted from better chemical safety regs that emerged after the disaster. Dow still hasn’t paid compensation top the Bhopal victims. And she’s still reliant on Dow (who bought Union Carbide) as a company making chemical ingredients in the commoditiies she loves. So what can she do with what she learns? How can she make a difference? Share Ashraf’s ”toxic rap battle’ video on her socials maybe? Keep the story alive.

Page reference: Ginny Childs (2017) Step Away From The Weapon. followthethings.com/step-away-from-the-weapon.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 9 minutes.

Posted on December 2, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Crude: The Real Price Of Oil

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Home & Auto

BRING MANAGERS INTO VIEW

TRANSLATE & SUBTITLE

MAKE A WEBSITE

STREISAND EFFECT

“Crude: The Real Price Of Oil“
A documentary film directed & produced by Joe Berlinger for First Run Features.
Trailer & pay per view stream embedded above. Search online for other streaming options here. Watch clips on the film’s YouTube channel here. Check its website here.

30,000 people living in Ecuador’s remote Amazon rainforest are taking out a US$27 billion class action suit against oil giant Chevron in the US over the dumping of toxic waste that has (allegedly) ruined their environment, livelihoods and health. Filmmaker Joe Berlinger hears about the case from the plaintiff’s US attorney and visits Ecuador to see what’s happening. He sees a gathering of indigenous people preparing a meal from canned tuna – unable to fish in their own water because its toxicity has killed or diseased any fish they might catch. The US oil giant Texaco had been drilling for oil here since the 1960s, and had allegedly dumped 18 billion gallon of toxic wastewater in the environment. Chevron had bought Texaco many years later so bought this responsibility too. Berlinger can’t imagine what his documentary will look like, or how it will appeal to audiences, until he meets an Ecuadorian oilfield labourer-turned-lawyer called Pablo Farjado who is working on the case. He’s the hero Berlinger needs, and he films without funding for a year (another two follow, after funding is secured). To join the dots in this case, he visits multiple places and talks to people who speak multiple languages. He films the trial, giving equal credence to the prosecution and the defence. He wants the audience to act as the jury, making up their own minds about the case. The film has fascinating twists, like the celebrities who get involved – most notably Trudie Styler and Sting – who help to turn what could have been a local news story into an international ’cause célèbre’. Once the film is released nationwide in the USA – even though the case is not resolved – it’s described as tragic, light, and comedic thriller because of its characters and unexpected twists and turns. One reviewer describes the film as ‘one of the most extraordinary legal dramas of our time’. Chevron’s lawyers and scientists have their say on screens, but audiences don’t warm to them. It’s a PR nightmare for Chevron. So the company attacks the film, filmmaker and prosecution team. Crude is one-sided, propaganda. And Chevron alleges corruption in the prosecution team which they say is shown in the film. A US court agrees that Berlinger should hand over all 600+ hours of footage so that Chevron’s complaint can be investigated, despite his First Amendments rights as a journalist. More celebrities (as well as filmmakers, journalists and professional organisations) come to his defence. But defending such a case is expensive when you’re up against an adversary with bottomless pockets. This is another excellent example of the ‘Streisand Effect’ – can attempts to intimidate trade justice activists (even when they’re trying to be even-handed!) discredit them and their work? Or can it create free publicity that makes it yet another unmissable film that a corporation ‘didn’t want you to see’? And, finally, can this type of manufactured scandal wither way, because less and less emphasis gets placed on the lives and environments of Ecuador’s indigenous people whose lives have been ruined by the oil industry?

Page reference: Jesse Fratkin, Judy Hwang and Shay O’Brien (2011) Crude: The Real Price Of Oil. followthethings.com/crude-the-real-price-of-oil.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 47 minutes.

Posted on November 29, 2024January 26, 2025 by Ian Cook

Life Of A Bullet

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Security

MOVIE OPENING CREDITS

CGI ANIMATION

CROSS CULTURES

FOLLOW THE THING

SOURCED IN EASTERN EUROPE

LIE TO TELL THE TRUTH

“Life Of A Bullet“
Opening credits to the movie ‘Lord Of War’ directed by Andrew Niccol with visual effects supervisor Yann Blondel.
Opening credits embedded above. Search online to watch them here. Stream the full movie here.

Imagine you could literally follow a thing, from the thing’s own point of view – like a video game – from its sites of production to its sites of consumption and maybe beyond. The opening credits of a Hollywood movie starring Nicholas Cage do just this. Set to Buffalo Springfield’s 1960s counterculture song ‘For what it’s worth (stop, hey what’s that sound)’, Lord of War begins by following the life of a bullet from a piece of sheet metal in a Ukrainian arms factory to a bullet flying out of an AK-47 assault rifle in streets of a Sierra Leone gunfight. Along the way it’s handled by lots of different people connected through its supply chain. At the end of its life, it serves its purpose by entering the forehead of a child soldier. This is when the song abruptly stops and the screen goes black. It’s catchy, bleak and brutal. But a bullet cannot be followed like this IRL. You need some research, an imagination and some heavy duty CGI expertise: like visual effects supervisor Yann Blondel’s. At followthethings.com this example has achieved a cult status. It’s like a foundation stone in the follow the thing genre. We keep coming back to it. Not only is this 3 minutes of GGI animation the best part of the movie (many commenters agree with us on that). It’s also the most brutally clear ‘follow the thing’ example we’ve found. Plus, it’s provoked the wildest discussions we have found about anything featured ion our site. Some discussion is are about the evils of the arms trade, and its undertones of colonialism and racial capitalism. But there are so many other perspectives. Some seem to have experience of shoot-em-up POV video games, others seem to have experience with real guns and ammunition, while still others seem to have an apparently deep knowledge of CGI animation, and more besides. Read the comments we’ve arranged below to see what we mean. If you’re a budding trade justice activist and you want to provoke enthusiastic discussion with your work, maybe this is the example to dig into. But, if you want that discussion to be focused on trade (in)justice, maybe it’s not. The movie, and the iconic opening scene that we’re talking about here, do get caught up in an international campaign to regulate the arms trade alongside another example we’ve researched (check here). But that doesn’t seem to have been the intention at the start.

Page reference: Ian Cook et al (2019) Life Of A Bullet. followthethings.com/pipetrouble.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 50 minutes.

Posted on November 29, 2024January 5, 2025 by Ian Cook

Teleshopping AK-47

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Security

2006

KALASHNIKOV

AK-47 ASSAULT RIFLE

USED IN THE DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF THE CONGO

CHANGE GOVERNMENT BEHAVIOUR

CREATE SOME CHARACTERS

INVOLVE CONSUMERS

DISTRIBUTED FROM TANZANIA

LIE TO TELL THE TRUTH

MAKE IT FUNNY

MAKE IT SNAPPY

MAKE IT AVAILABLE

PROMPT GOOD CITIZENSHIP

“Teleshopping AK-47“
A spoof teleshopping channel promotion directed by Dougal Wilson and post-produced by MPC for Mother, commissioned by Amnesty International.
Full video embedded above. Search online for versions with other titles here.

Amnesty International is trying to get 1 million people involved in their campaign to tighten loopholes in international arms trade legislation. To demonstrate how easy it is to buy weapons like AK-47 assault rifles, how cheap they are, and how they end up being used in armed conflicts (often involving child soldiers), they commission some culture jamming. Its a short video that imagines that these weapons can be sold by cheery presenters on TV shopping channel’s chintzy pastel-coloured set, just like ice-cream makers and his ‘n’ hers dressing gowns. They’re perfect for child soldiers, the presenters say, like those in Liberia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. They give one to a child to demonstrate on set, who cheerfully shoots a mannequin to pieces. Amnesty commission this darkly comedic, camp and chilling 135 second film to show in cinemas, alongside the real ads. They publish it on YouTube. Later, it’s included as an extra on the DVD of Nicholas Cage’s Hollywood arms trade blockbuster Lord of War [see our page on its Life of a bullet opening credits here]. Amnesty can’t advertise on UK TV because they’re a political organisation. And the use of pastiche / parody / humour is a novel approach in human rights campaigning in 2006. But Amnesty really go for it. On top of the cinema ad, there’s a viral email campaign, spoof arms shopping catalogues are delivered through people’s doors, and pop-up high street weapons shops open around the UK with live shooting demonstrations. Commenters are shocked by this disgusting, deeply sinister but informative campaign. One says these weapons are beautiful and every American should have one. Another pretends to agree, saying that guns don’t kill people, people do and, if guns were taken away, people could just as easily kill eachother with knives or rubber ducks. Some say humour is inappropriate for such a serious topic. Others say the ad and the catalogue is so light, so beautifully done, so plausible, that it’s perfect for generating conversations about the international arms trade and its (lack of) regulation.

Page reference: Daisy Livingston (2024) Teleshopping AK-47. followthethings.com/teleshopping-ak-47.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 30 minutes.

Posted on November 22, 2024January 7, 2025 by Ian Cook

Darwin’s Nightmare

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Grocery | Security

SHOT IN AFRICA

DOCUMENTARY FILM

JOIN THE DOTS

FIND SOME CHARACTERS

HUMANISE WORKERS

INCLUDE SUFFERING KIDS

EMBODY EXPLOITATION

BRING POLITICIANS INTO VIEW

INCLUDE EMOTION

MAKE IT PROVOCATIVE

WALK THE WALK

“Darwin’s Nightmare“
A documentary film directed by Hubert Sauper for Mille et Une Productions.
Trailer embedded above. Search online for streaming options here.

Austrian filmmaker Hubert Sauper examines the effects of a fish that’s been introduced to the African Great Lake Victoria for commercial reasons. They’ve displaced other fish that local people rely upon for their diet and are farmed and flown away on cargo planes to be eaten by Northern consumers. More controversially, some of those planes (allegedly) return full of weapons that fuel civil wars in neighbouring countries. Here, capitalist and colonial logics create a place where Tanzanian fishermen, homeless children, prostitutes, government minsters, Russian pilots, World Bank officials, European Union commissioners live and work together in an ‘ungodly alliance’. Viewers say the film is clever, damaging and racist, and/or artfully depressing. Its director calls it a ‘feel bad’ movie. It’s nominated for an Oscar but loses to a penguin documentary. Northern consumers who love the Omega 3 in fish like Nile Perch start to boycott it, and sales are affected for a while. Darwin’s Nightmare makes Tanzania look terrible. Its government denounces the film, accuses its director of fabricating storylines (e.g the role of this arms trade plays in the spread of HIV), demands that he apologies and pursues the subjects of his film to punish them. Western governments learning about this arms trade from the film put pressure on Tanzania to stop it, and to stop silencing African journalists who have let the world know about it. One journalist criticises the film’s one dimensional portrayal of the hell caused in Tanzania by this fish trade. It’s a mixed picture. So much of its positive effects aren’t included. One critic is sued for calling the film a hoax. There are unprecedented personal attacks on the director, accusing him of acting unethically, threatening him with death and posting fake photos online of him with Saddam Hussein. The main criticism of his film is that it plays to centuries-old Western stereotypes of African savagery and backwardness. Critics say it reveals – but also helps to do – damage to the people of Tanzania. Sauper says he’s not found anything new. All he’s done is joined the dots between well known issues. Between the global arms and food trade, for example. It’s not an out and out activist film. It’s more of a film noir. No solutions are offered. So what responsibility do you have for the impacts of your film noir? Discussions of this film are super-heated.

Page reference: Aparupa Chakravarti & Jeff Bauer (2014) Darwin’s Nightmare. followthethings.com/darwins-nightmare.shtml (last accessed <insert date here>)

Estimated reading time: 93 minutes.

Posted on October 16, 2024February 20, 2025 by Ian Cook

Ghosts

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Grocery

CHANGE GOVERNMENT BEHAVIOUR

CHANGE CORPORATE BEHAVIOUR