Alterati.com - Interview with Micha Peled

San Francisco based documentarian Micha X. Peled risked hide and hair to make his recent doc China Blue.

An intimate look at the life and work of a 17-year-old farm girl turned sweatshop thread cutter, China Blue has seen 23 countries and inspired activism on an international level. This is no surprise to Peled, who made this film and its companion website with the intention of showing consumers exactly what it is they’re involved in – no matter how accidental that involvement may be.

Sara Schieron: Your last film, Store Wars: When Wal-Mart Comes to Town, concerned the fate of a town after the arrival of a Wal-Mart mega-store. For China Blue you’re looking at the origin of the products sold. Why did you choose to look at this part of the global economy?

Micha Peled: I think globalization is the over-arching theme of our times. We’ve never been in a time that is more prosperous or more impoverished than right now. The differences between rich and poor in the world have never been more dramatic and corporations have never had so much power over our lives as they do now. We’re all told we live in democracies where the important decisions get voted on but in fact many areas of our daily lives are controlled by corporations that are not accountable to anyone - and we are not consulted on the decisions that they make. These issues are very complex and hard to explain and they’re basically abstract, so as a result, there is very little public debate about them. I’m interested in finding the human stories that illustrate some of the implications of globalization, and telling those stories in a way that everyone can relate to so they can see how it’s impacting their own lives. As you mentioned, the first film in this trilogy was about a small town that is trying to keep the largest corporation in the world – Wal-Mart – out. In the process of making that film and finding out what Wal-Mart is all about, I got curious about the other end of the same story which is the production line. The cheep goods that Wal-Mart sells – where do they come from? How do they get made? Of course, Wal-Mart is the largest of them all but it’s just an example. There are lots of other big discount stores. China is an example of a global phenomenon but again; it’s the largest example, the best location to tell the story about how the products we buy every day are made.

Jasmine and her friends are amazed by the giant jeans they make for enormous Americans.

Sara Schieron: China is not an easy place to shoot. I understand you had to smuggle your camera, in pieces, into the country, footage was confiscated, and authorities blocked your access –

Micha Peled: Well that makes it more interesting doesn’t it? I could have made it a lot easier on myself if I went to film in Mexico or Central America. You certainly can find that story very near to here in countries that are not totalitarian or in places where I speak the language or where travel is only a few hours away. But the “Made in China” Label has become the most well known logo in the world, so I couldn’t think of a better place to tell this story. Also, I think that we should all become interested in what’s going on in China. I think we tend to find China very mysterious and difficult to understand because their culture is so different from ours but they’re becoming a major world power and for that reason alone I think we should all try to understand them better.

Sara Schieron: China Blue covers a great number of international law violations. How did you get permission to shoot inside the LiFeng factory?

“In his universe of Chinese factories, Mr. Lam has nothing to hide.”

Micha Peled: Getting access was definitely the biggest obstacle we faced. We were turned down by many factories that realized it’s against their interest to let us film. Finally we were introduced to Mr. Lam through a business associate of his with whom I spent the previous night clubbing until all hours. That was the way of bonding. We came across a man who was very proud of his factory because it’s relatively new and one of the better ones around. In his universe of Chinese factories, Mr. Lam has nothing to hide. In his factory the workers sleep 12 to a room and each room has it’s own bathroom. Many factories that I visited have 20-30-50 to a room with just one bathroom stall down the hall for everybody. Hundreds of people get up in the morning, desperate to get to work on time because if they’re late they get fined. So to begin with he didn’t think the request to film was in any way threatening to him. In addition, I told him that the film was about him; that I was interested in making a film about the first generation of Chinese entrepreneurs who are transforming China into a free market economy and creating jobs. I told him that we were at the research stage and that we were filming in six different factories and that we couldn’t even promise him his factory would be chosen. So, based on that he allowed us the kind of access that I wanted which was complete, 24/7 access to all parts of the factory without anybody from management following us. I told him that the first thing I would do was send someone – well, my associate producer Song Chen, who was with me and was also acting as my interpreter. I said I wanted her to come to the factory and spend a week here with many of your workers so that we can find a couple of them to feature in the film and he said, “Oh that’s fine. She can stay in this nice hotel and I can hire a driver to pick her up and take her to the factory.” And I said “No, no, surely you could spare one of the bunk beds in one of the workers’ dorms for her.” He thought that was kind of bizarre but he agreed. So she lived there for a week and got to know a number of the worker and at night would send me emails with capsule profiles of the people and that’s how we started. Later on, when I got concerned about him asking us why we were still in the dorms and ‘why were we taking so long?’ I cut a five-minute sales promo for the factory out of the footage we’d shot. It had smiling workers and me in voice over saying: “we always deliver on time.” I gave it to him as a gift and he’s been very happy with that.

Sara Schieron: That’s subversive! Tell me about your protagonist Jasmine. The film makes a point of getting close to her. Why was it necessary for us to engage with her so personally?

Micha Peled: I’m primarily a storyteller and much less a journalist. I think that we can reach a lot more people if we tell them stories. If I went around and told people “Hey come out and see a film about sweatshops in China,” – nobody would want to see it. I wouldn’t want to see it. Who wants to sit through an hour and a half of misery watching workers hunched over sewing machines? But if you invite people to watch a film about a young girl who has to leave her village to get a job and help the family and that moves into the horrors of the sweatshop and what happens to her, then it’s a lot more interesting. I think it’s through stories that we learn and connect with people. Also, I wanted everybody to draw the conclusion from the film that we are all implicated in some way, as consumers and if we stop seeing the workers as faceless masses of people, and instead think of Jasmine, one girl that we could relate to who could be our next door neighbor, suddenly this form of modern slavery is no longer acceptable.

After working for days without rest, Jasmine and the other workers hold their eyes open with clothespins.

Sara Schieron: Our close relationship with these characters reveals that every one of them is caught in a corner. Factory owner Lam has to work his employees 20 hours a day to meet deadline, the employees are exploited but strikes are illegal, international labor law can’t be followed if the business is to complete, no business means no jobs – for every station in the chain, there is a person in a corner.

Micha Peled: It’s a food chain not unlike The Jungle - and it’s created by the people at the top: the international retailers. They drive the whole system. They go to factory owners and say “we want you to provide us with this product at this price, and if you can’t do it at this price and at this speed, we are simply going to go somewhere else.” In the town where the film was shot, there are over 70 factories that specialize in denim. They’re all eager to get those orders. If Mr. Lam, the factory owner in my film, said “I’m sorry, it’s going to cost me at least $6 to make the jeans because I need to pay them the legal minimum wage and overtime compensation.” They would just say “Sorry, the factory down the street from you is willing to do it for four dollars.” So they are the ones driving the system and the rest of the world just has to survive. Obviously the weakest ones are the workers themselves. They are so poor that they’re desperate to take any job and they don’t have any options at all, they just have to somehow survive in this very inhuman system.