Award Winning Documentary "China Blue" showing in Cork
To celebrate Ireland’s 3rd Ethical Fashion Week EDA would like to invite you to watch the award winning documentary “CHINA BLUE” on Monday May 24th
WHERE : Cork’s Camden Palace Hotel on Camden Quay (opposite the Kilkenny Shop). Doors are at 7:30 - No Charge
CHINA BLUE takes viewers inside a jeans factory in Southern China and follows the daily life of 17 year old Jasmine & her colleagues. Providing perspectives from both the top and bottom levels of the factory’s hierarchy, the film looks at complex issues of globalization from the human level.
To watch the trailer please click here - Click
Seventeen-year-old Jasmine left her home village for a factory job in the city. There, like an estimated 130 million migrant workers on the move in China, most of them young women, she finds factory employment assembling denim clothing for export to overseas companies. She shares a room with 12 other girls and labors every day from 8 a.m. until 2 a.m., seven days a week, removing lint and snipping the loose threads from the seams of denim jeans. Jasmine’s initial excitement to be able to help her family with her wages quickly dissipates as she is overwhelmed by the long work hours and the delays in pay. The strong friendships she forms with her co-workers and memories of home are her only solace. The "new era” of economic progress in China has also created a new generation of entrepreneurs like Mr. Lam, a former police chief who is now the owner of the factory where Jasmine works. To get a new order from a promising British buyer, Mr. Lam must agree to extremely low prices and a very tight delivery schedule. For the deal to work, he cuts his workers' pay and requires them to work around the clock.
While CHINA BLUE shows how the global economic system leaves the Chinese factory owner with few choices, it also explores in detail what that means for the workers. Anxious to avoid getting fined for falling asleep on the job, Jasmine and her friend Li Ping sneak out of the factory to buy energy tea, but they get caught and are fined. Other workers resort to clipping clothespins on their eyelids to keep their eyes open. When the workers’ endurance reaches a breaking point, their only recourse may be a strike, which is illegal in China.
CHINA BLUE, which was made without permission from the Chinese authorities, offers an alarming report on the economic pressures applied by Western companies and the resulting human consequences, as the real profits are made—and kept—in first-world countries. The unexpected ending makes the connection between the exploited workers and U.S. consumers even clearer.
User Comment IMDB: nickhornby from United Kingdom
This is not the usual rant about China's sweat shop factories, Peled's film is much more powerful than that. By focusing on a narrow cast of characters we get to know and love his protagonists, young girls from the provinces forced to travel to find work but also fascinated by the glamour of city life. Instead of the usual pat liberalism, the film goes on to show how even the bosses are also caught up in a cycle of exploitation that ends ultimately with the foreign buyers insisting on ludicrously low prices. Funny, moving and intelligent: the film shows you how we can get such unbelievable deals and why China has become the workshop of the world.
Re-Dress Ethical Fashion Week
Re-Dress FASHION EVOLUTION Ireland's 3rd Ethical Fashion Week - May 24th - 29th – more at www.re-dress.ie
Re-dress proudly presents ‘FASHION EVOLUTION’, Ireland's third ethical fashion week. Fashion Evolution aims to re-vitalise the spirit of the Irish fashion industry, with a schedule of exciting events catering for consumers, producers, retailers and supporters of fashion alike. Visit www.re-dress.ie for the full programme and more information.
About Camden Palace
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www.edacork.orgLatin America Week from April 15th – 22nd
Ethical Development Action in collaboration with the Latin America Solidarity Centre invites you to the launch of a series of events to celebrate Latin America Week on Thursday 15th of April from 6pm to 7pm in the Vision Centre, North Main Street.
Turning the Tide. Resisting the Water Trade
This exhibition aims to focus attention on the issue of the private exploitation of water, and the impact of this on human development.
Although water is absolutely fundamental for life to exist, over 1 billion people in the world lack safe access to clean water and 25 million people in the world die every year as a result of contaminated waters. In Latin America, despite having 55% of the worlds total renewable water resources, 100 million people live without access to safe water.
Recent waves of privatisation of water in countries such as Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia and Colombia, have often made matters worse; with massive increases in water rates, illnesses and death from contaminated water. This situation has sparked massive demonstrations such as the, now well known, "Water Wars" in Bolivia. The strong opposition has forced some administrations to rescind the contracts to transnational corporations, that were reaping huge benefits from water privatisation, while delivering very poor service or no service at all to the vast majority in need.
Turning the Tide. Resisting the Water Trade contains photos taken by Members, Volunteers and Friends of the Latin America Solidarity Centre. It focuses on the use and abuse of water and other natural resources and the struggles over control of those resources through the example of Latin America.
Sunday 18th April 4pm - Victoria Hotel, Patrick Street
4pm Exhibition of Arpilleras (Traditional Chilean embroidered quilts) and documentary about Chile under Pinochet.
Screening of Latin American Film
"The Cardboard Train"
From the dusty streets of the Argentinian industrial suburbs, comes a moving tale of survival and hope under challening circumstances. Seen through the eyes of a vivacious 7 year-old, Yessica, this is the story of her cardboard-picking family who make the daily journey on the train to earn a living by scavenging paper. An honest narrative focusing on their plight and their unfaltering will to survive.
7pm - Screening of highly aclaimed documentary with discussion afterwards led by development education officer Martin Naarendorp
"The Future of Food"
This groundbreaking documentary released in 2004, distills the complex technology and key regulatory, legal, ethical, environmental and consumer issues surrounding the troubling changes happening in the food system today—genetically engineered foods, patenting, and the corporatization of food—into terms the average person can easily understand. It empowers consumers to understand the consequences of their food choices on our future.
Monday 19th April 7pm - Victoria Hotel, Patrick Street
Talk by Fergal Anderson
"Growing resistance - the fight to fix the food system"
Fergal Anderson, European Coordinator of the international peasant movement Via Campesina, Brussels. Fergal is an activist from a rural community in Co. Galway. He visited Chiapas as the Zapatistas were starting their “other campaign” in 2006. This experience motivated him to study a Masters in Public Advocacy and Activism in Galway. He first came into contact with La Via Campesina at the anti-G8 mobilisations in Rostock in Germany in 2007 and became a volunteer interpreter at their meetings and mobilisations in Europe during 2008.
Becca Mohally-Renk development practitioner currently working in Nicaragua will give a short presentation on her work
Organic Coffee and Nicaraguan crafts available
Wednesday 21st April 7pm - Victoria Hotel, Patrick Street
Latin American documentaries
"Colours at the end of the world"
In 2006 Benetton celebrated 40 years at the forefront of high street fashion and in recent years one of the most unusual and visually provocative advertising campaigns. Today the situation has changed. He is caught up in a dispute with international repercussions. In 2004, C.T.S.A., part of the Benetton holding company, forcibly evicted a couple from their rural home, having finally to resort to police intervention. The Mapuche Indians have gathered the support of international activists and a Nobel Peace prize-winner in their fight against the giant landowners. Benetton is the largest foreign landowner in Patagonia, Argentina with close to a million hectares of prime farming land, which helps to support the textile industry's demand for wool. The group provide employment, support, food, building materials, winter fuels, medical services and education for the community. The Mapuches however are adamant, ancient lands cannot be bought and sold, they are a birth right of the age-old community. These questions have been brought forward to the law courts and the situation continues. How justified are the Mapuches in their claims and how much more land should be sold off to foreign investors. Can Benetton placate the Indian community and maintain his highly regarded worldwide reputation?
Capoeira Performance by Mundo Capoeira Cork
"Favela Rising"
Winner of 36 International Film Festival Awards
Favela Rising documents a man and a movement, a city divided and a favela (Brazilian squatter settlement) united. Haunted by the murders of his family and many of his friends, Anderson Sá is a former drug-trafficker who turns social revolutionary in Rio de Janeiro’s most feared slum. Through hip-hop music, the rhythms of the street, and Afro-Brazilian dance he rallies his community to counteract the violent oppression enforced by teenage drug armies and sustained by corrupt police. At the dawn of liberation, just as collective mobility is overcoming all odds and Anderson’s grassroots Afro Reggae movement is at the height of its success, a tragic accident threatens to silence the movement forever.
Any questions regarding Latin America Week please contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or 085 7116534
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