Mardi Gras: Made in China

Each year in the streets of the American city of New Orleans, on "Fat Tuesday", the last day before Lent, there takes place an enormous moving carnival. Necklaces made of beads play a large role in the festivities. Thousands of these fly throughout the air to those who are brave or brash enough to reveal their naked bodies before the screaming crowds. Those who are present are oblivious to where these beads come from. All except for documentary filmmaker David Redmont, who in this brilliantly filmed and very successful debut sets off to the Chinese factory in the special economic zone of Fujian where the beads are made. Over four hundred young women work here six days a week from morning until night threading beads or decorating miniature carnival masks. During the grueling work, under the threat of a fine, they are not allowed to even whisper. The average earnings for a twelve-hour work shift is less than two dollars. Director David Redmont succeeds in connecting the world of the American consumers and the Chinese workers in a very personal way, and the beads in his ingeniously constructed picture become a metaphor pointing to the structure of globalization, which creates social inequality. It is also worth paying attention to the superbly mixed music of David Dogherty, whose cold humor and ironic view of the film is underscored by the industrial rhythms formed by the real sounds of the factory.