The Toronto International Film Festival featured the film, China Blue, a fascinating story of young girls making designer brand name jeans, in China, under questionable conditions.
This particular factory was actually only two years old, with a steel fence and uniformed security police at the gate. We saw the owner, a former police chief, drive up in his Mercedes-Benz.
"We actually wanted to film in a much older and shabbier factory, where they made cute and cuddly Walt Disney dolls. Needless to say, they said no," said Michael Peled, producer, director and writer. "We told this owner we wanted to film his operation to show the West what a good operation he had, " said Song Chen, associate producer, sound and research.
The workers, young girls from the interior of China, work and live in the factory, seven days a week, up to eighteen hours a day. They need permission if they decide to leave the company. In order to make that decision difficult, their first pay is held back. They are paid every month or a month and a half, poorly, when the order of jeans for export to the West is completed.
They live in small rooms upstairs from the factory, eight to a room in bunk beds. To wash, they have to carry their water up several floors, in a pail, and pay for it. " I lived with the girls in their small room. At first they were a little afraid of me, I was older, I was from Taiwan, but as I helped the carry the water upstairs, and other things, they warmed up," said Chen.
180 million people have come from the interior rural areas of China to work for low wages in the industrial areas.
The filmmakers followed the lives of several young ladies, one who went back to her parents' farm with her "fiancé-to-be". "Going to the interior was more difficult than being in the city," said Peled, adding, "Our cameraman was arrested and held until we contacted Beijing. They kept the film ... to this day. We had to return to the countryside in a car with darkened windows." Peled added that "the film took one year to edit and we shot 85 hours of film. We have never shown the owner of the company the film, though we did make a promotional film for him."
How the documentary film was made is in itself an interesting story.
China Blue
Archived Articles | 23 Sep 2005 | Adu RaudkiviEWR
Archived Articles
TRENDING
