China Blue is a documentary that follows a 17 year old Chinese girl migrating from her home in the Sichuan province to work in a jeans factory in Guangdong. It shows the harsh realities as a factory worker for millions of migrants in China.
The film gives a very detailed insight, what it is like to work in a Chinese factory. The extremely long workday, going for weeks or months without a day to rest, not getting paid (even when you do it's barely enough for the amount of work done), sleeping in cramped conditions, eating crap food and being threatened every step of the way by a complete bell-end of a boss.
After the initial excitement of Jasmine's journey, as she leaves her peasant family to go work in the big wide world like her friends, she quickly gets fed up with her life and struggles to keep up with the harsh working hours and conditions. The voice over is taken from diary entries and interviews with her, giving a very personal touch to the film.
Even though the primary focus of the film is on Jasmine, the factory owner features heavily in the film. His commentary on himself, the factory, the workers and just about anything else is totally cringe worthy. He is pretty much the stereotypical boss who believes the sun shines out of his arse but is actually just a complete arsehole. Some of his comments are priceless and he openly admits how he would basically do anything to gain more money. No surprise that he is an ex-local police chief either. :roll:
Other wankers in the film include a contingent of people from a Hong Kong-Canadian business association, who inspect the factories, pretending to give a shit about the obviously exploited workers, while every person they meet lies about how good the conditions in the factory are. There is also a French businessmen talking about how he only does deals with people who wine and dine him in expensive restaurants, while the workers slave away at about 0.5 yuan an hour with no overtime pay.
You also get to hear an ex-factory supervisor talking about some of the secrets that the boss' don't want you to hear, a brief interview with a labour activist and some of the other workers' views on how they are treat. It does give the full spectrum of those involved in the process and a very real image of how things are done in the industry.
The trailer is below and you can watch the full film by following this link.
[youtube]roy7CUk26uo[/youtube]
Comments
Hey, thanks for posting this,
Hey, thanks for posting this, I have wanted to watch this film.
Just a quick note, I have location tagged this article in Guangdong, but if you could click the map at the location your articles are about that would be really great (as the libcom map is a bit Europe/America-heavy at the moment)
I'll go through some older
I'll go through some older ones once I've finished eating this sandwich ;)
No worries, I wouldn't worry
No worries, I wouldn't worry about older ones, as us admins will have probably done them already, just a note for the future!