Director/Producer Micha Peled talks about smuggling film in and out of China, meeting the workers featured in CHINA BLUE and the secrets to good Mediterranean cuisine.
What led you to make CHINA BLUE?
We all know that globalization brings us clothes and shoes made by
cheap labor in the Third World. But as long as these workers are
faceless millions, their exploitation doesn't bother us too much. I
wanted this film to put a human face on the issue, to get us to
know just one worker and her personality, dreams and imagination.
Once she is as human as the girl next door, even if she is a peasant
teenager in China, treating her so badly just so we save a few bucks
on a pair of jeans becomes unacceptable.
When we created the Web site for my previous film, STORE WARS: When Wal-Mart Comes to Town, we used a factory in China as an example of how Wal-Mart gets its cheap goods. That got me interested in the topic, but I still needed a good story. It was a New Yorker article (by Peter Hessler) that highlighted the personal story of one factory girl that convinced me that I should try to shoot a character-based film on the topic. For the protagonist role we auditioned girls on the first day at work and went on from there.
What did you want to achieve with CHINA BLUE?
I wanted to put a human face on this issue of modern slavery. We all know that Third World workers are being exploited on our behalf. But as long as they are faceless masses, we can easily ignore the problem. Once viewers get to know Jasmine and her friends as just normal teenagers with dreams, humor and personal journals, it’s no longer acceptable that these girls are treated so poorly just so we can have cheap clothes.
I also wanted people to understand that allowing the workers of China a living wage and minimal working conditions doesn’t have to cost the consumers much. My film shows that the workers together get paid just one dollar for a pair of jeans. If you tripled their salary, to bring it close to the minimum wage in China, it would only make our jeans two dollars more expensive. In fact, the total cost of making the clothes is only five to ten percent of the retail price we pay at the store. What really determines the price is the cost of the advertising, the lease on the fancy stores in the mall and the salaries of the retail company executives.
I also wanted to tell a story from China. If not for Iraq, our media will be looking daily at U.S.-China relations, which are so fraught with complications. There is no other country in the world that I feel we should get to know better, and yet understand so little.
What has the audience response been so far?
The film has shown in 25 countries, and I got to talk to audiences in many of them, both in film festivals and in commercial theatrical screenings. Everywhere, from Bermuda to Israel, from New Zealand to Italy, people asked the same question: What can we do about this? All over the world people immediately saw their direct connection, as consumers, to these village girls in China.
I hope activist groups will channel this consumer frustration into a clear message to the international retailers: give us some clothes we won’t feel guilty buying. There is a great market niche there waiting for the smart retailer.
What can people do to help workers like Jasmine?
Our film is banned in China and we've decided it's better for Jasmine not to be associated with the film and the filmmakers. The factory owner got into trouble with local authorities for collaborating with foreign media without a permit, but he knows who to bribe and how to navigate the system.
We're more protective of Jasmine and the other workers. Before we started filming with Jasmine, we filmed for over a year with a different girl who had just arrived in the factory. When we went to film her in her village, the police arrested our crew and threatened the family because they were cooperating with foreign media. We had to throw away all the footage with had with her. We went back to the factory and started all over with Jasmine, and fortunately, the Chinese police never tracked us down.
If individuals want to do something about this problem they can tell their favorite brands to make sweatshop-free clothes. You can contact the human rights and sweatshop alternative organizations listed on this site in Learn More to find out how you can help.
How did you meet and choose the workers profiled in CHINA BLUE?
My idea from the start was to feature a new worker, a girl who has just arrived from the village on her first day at work, as the protagonist. She’d be naïve, excited, and as clueless as the viewers regarding what’s about to unfold. Our form of “casting” was to film for a few days with a number of workers who had just gotten hired. I picked Jasmine because she loved to write short stories and kept a diary, which made me feel closer to her.
The factory owner was another major character, but I was also looking for another worker as a counterpoint to Jasmine. I wanted to avoid the cliché of going back and forth between the factory owner and the lowest-on-the-totem-pole new worker.
My associate producer, Song Chen, lived for a week in the dorm with the workers before we started filming. When Song told me about Orchid, I knew she should be in the film. Orchid brought nuance to the film, showing the workers are not always miserable. Her dancing and fashion shows brought energy and levity to an otherwise grim and serious subject.
Tell us more about the experience of shooting a documentary clandestinely, without permission from the Chinese authorities.
China requires filmmakers (even local ones) to obtain a film permit. We could have obtained one, and they’d have found a model factory for us, one that would serve as poster factory for China’s industrial engine. An official from the Propaganda Department (they still call it by its real name, we think we’ve evolved by calling it P.R.) would have accompanied us from the moment we landed.
Instead, we went as tourists. We took the DV Cam camera apart each time and smuggled it into the country, reassembling it in China. As long as we were filming around the factory we were fine, but when we went to the countryside to follow our characters back to their village, the police were on us like flies on honey. The day before Orchid’s birthday party, the police told us to leave the province right away. We pretended to leave and came back very early the next morning in a car with tinted windows. Fortunately, Orchid’s house was situated outside the village.
Our worst experience was in another village. We had filmed for a year with a different protagonist, called Little Fish. During the SARS epidemic we didn’t go to China for eight months. In the meantime, Little Fish quit her job and went back home. We went to the village, thinking we were going to shoot the end of the film. This time, I, as the only westerner, stayed an hour away. The village leader sent the police after my crew, thinking they are from a nearby TV station, doing an expose on local corruption. When they discovered that my associate producer had an American passport, which said she had been born in Taiwan, they arrested her and the cameraman. They were interrogated non-stop until four in the morning. It took many frenetic phone calls to get them released. But the police confiscated tapes and intimidated Little Fish for cooperating with foreign media. We had to go back to the factory and start all over again with a new girl that just got hired that day.
How did this compare with making previous documentaries?
I’ve never had to deal with hostile authorities before, but in a number of projects I had to sweet talk my way into getting access. In STORE WARS, I had to obtain the cooperation of Wal-Mart, one of the most media-suspicious corporations around. A film is always better if you get up close and personal to the bad guys. In Inside God’s Bunker, I focused on the most extremist group of Israeli settlers in the West Bank, who had never before let any media into their homes.
Each time I had to come up with a credible story on who I am and what are my objectives. The rest took care of itself. One thing I found out is that most self-righteous people tend to feel very proud and confident about what they do, no matter how despicable others may find them. In this gap between how they see themselves and how the world will view them, I exist as a filmmaker. That is my rich grazing habitat.
What didn’t get included in your film that you would have liked to?
We came across many other stories that just left me gaping with amazement. For example, because safety measures are so poor, many workers get job injuries. In the Pearl River Delta region where we filmed, we were told that 31 workers lose a limb every week in industrial accidents, and one gets killed every four days. We filmed with Zhou Litai, one of the few lawyers in all of China who defended these workers. He sued their factories for compensation, but it dragged in the courts for years. We filmed heartbreaking stories there, but there just wasn’t room for it in the film.
I also would have liked to have more screen time to develop Orchid’s love story. I particularly liked a scene where she called a radio talk show that offers relationship advice. These scenes are on the educational DVD.
What were some of your concerns in making the film?
In addition to just worrying about getting us and the footage safely out of China, I worried about the workers who participated in the film. I didn’t want them penalized when the film came out. Actually, they were covered because they were all instructed by the factory owner to cooperate with us. But in addition, I wanted them to have a piece of paper they could show in case they were questioned by the authorities, so we signed a contract with each one of them.
In the end only the factory owner had to explain himself to the police, not the workers. He was approached by the authorities after the press on the film at the Hong Kong film festival. You’d think they would want to know why he was breaking every section in China’s labor laws, but no, they demanded explanation why he cooperated with foreign media, giving his country a bad name.
The independent film business is a difficult one. What keeps you motivated?
I couldn’t get another job.
Why did you choose to present your film on public television?
PBS did a great job with my last film, as far as generating a debate about its topic: Wal-Mart. Thousands of viewers took the time to post their reactions in the Talkback section, and started debating the issue among themselves. So don’t forget to do that yourself in this Web site.
In addition, what other major broadcaster would want to carry a documentary that is subtitled?
What are your three favorite films?
It’s easier just to mention three recent films that really moved me:
Turtles Can Fly
Shape of the Moon
Working Mom
What do you think is the most inspirational food for making independent film?
The taste of home, which is for me the Mediterranean cuisine. It can be real simple, preferably with local and seasonal ingredients. Maybe some goat cheese that’s been washed in local wine and rolled in dried herbs, succulent olives like those from the trees my family owned when I grew up, juicy tomatoes, and a sprig of fresh basil—all accompanied by a flat loaf of green onion bread, dripping with extra virgin olive oil.
If you could have dinner with one famous person, living or dead, who would you choose and why?
It would be the British novelist David Mitchell. He is my favorite contemporary writer, but still he will have to share my Mediterranean meal. This will put him in such a good mood that he will reveal to me the secrets of story telling in the 21st century. If I could write anything like his Cloud Atlas I’ll even give up any future ITVS funding.
What didn’t you get done when you were making your film?
I didn’t make the pet food commercial that would have set me for the next couple of years. I didn’t win the Potrero Hill amateur tango contest and I didn’t get to take my girlfriend on a trip around the world to see if it’s really round.
Learn about China and human rights violations >>
Read about the labor practices of some major jeans brands >>
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