This movie is about a jeans factory in Shaxi (China) where long days of hard work, little sleep and heartbreaking living circumstances are normal.
The story unfolds around a little 16 year old Chinese girl called Jasmine. She moves from the countryside to the big city to go and work in the fairly new jeans factory of Mr. Guo Xi Lam(factory owner). Even though Mr. Guo Xi Lam seems to love to see his employee's happy and working in a nice environment with good benefits but because of the harsh western retail trade this seems rather impossible.
You get to see everything from the working environment, the employee meals, their sleeping flats, how they live, how they work, how the management works, how they interact with their personnel, how people get paid(or not) etc. Working shifts up to 20 hours, a maximum of 2 toilet breaks, 1 lunch/dinner break and a salary of only $6ct per hour seem unreal compared to our western standards but unfortunately they aren't...
Although the film crew had a hard time filming this entire documentary due to intervention of the Chinese police and the country's tight control over foreign media they succeeded in making it. This movie is a real eye-opener for the entire western world, allowing everyone to know how that 100 pants we're made and what the factory-personnel sees from that large sum of money. If you still have the ability to go and watch this movie in the cinema's I would really recommend doing so. Or otherwise go rent/buy the DVD which will be in a store near you around November 2006.
The story unfolds around a little 16 year old Chinese girl called Jasmine. She moves from the countryside to the big city to go and work in the fairly new jeans factory of Mr. Guo Xi Lam(factory owner). Even though Mr. Guo Xi Lam seems to love to see his employee's happy and working in a nice environment with good benefits but because of the harsh western retail trade this seems rather impossible.
You get to see everything from the working environment, the employee meals, their sleeping flats, how they live, how they work, how the management works, how they interact with their personnel, how people get paid(or not) etc. Working shifts up to 20 hours, a maximum of 2 toilet breaks, 1 lunch/dinner break and a salary of only $6ct per hour seem unreal compared to our western standards but unfortunately they aren't...
Although the film crew had a hard time filming this entire documentary due to intervention of the Chinese police and the country's tight control over foreign media they succeeded in making it. This movie is a real eye-opener for the entire western world, allowing everyone to know how that 100 pants we're made and what the factory-personnel sees from that large sum of money. If you still have the ability to go and watch this movie in the cinema's I would really recommend doing so. Or otherwise go rent/buy the DVD which will be in a store near you around November 2006.