INJUSTICE & INDIFFERENCE:
2010 Human Rights Film Series
Mardi Gras: Made in China
Director: David Redmon
Run time: 72 minutes
Winner of 21 national and international awards, Mardi Gras: Made in China follows the path of Mardi Gras beads from the streets of New Orleans during Carnival—where female revelers, in exchange for strings of the inexpensive beads, expose their breasts to cheering onlookers, back to the rigidly disciplined factories in Fuzhou, China—where teenage girls string beads by day and night.
Blending observations about the global economy with comedy, Mardi Gras: Made in China is the only film to explore how the toxic products directly affect the people who both make and consume them. (www.carnivalesquefilms.com)
The film captures the profound irony of young Chinese girls, who leave their families and villages behind, to work day and night, and live in cramped dormitories near their factory in order to make the cheap beads that young American girls gather during a night of bacchanalian excess. By focusing on a trivial item that revelers toss aside, the film underscores the wide economic gap between developing nations and consumerist nations brought about by economic globalization.
The message of the film, however, resonates long after Mardi Gras has passed, as the viewer comes to realize that the beads are just one among thousands of products that American’s consume each day that are made under similar working conditions in China and other third-world nations.
