Israeli film director Micha X. Peled recently produced and directed the film China Blue, a real-life story of Jasmine, a 17-year-old factory worker in China. Jasmine labors long, grueling hours each day making blue jeans for American companies. She is paid very little and working conditions are harsh and dangerous. As Peled's film follows the lives of Jasmine and her friends, it sheds light not only on the reality of exploitation and slave labor, but on the humanity of the workers.
JVibe was very fortunate to have snagged a few minutes with Micha Peled. In the following interview, the director/producer discusses his experience making the film, his Jewish identity, and how he thinks we can all make the world a better place.
What inspired you to make this film?
When we created the website for my previous film, STORE WARS: When Wal-Mart Comes to Town (http://www.pbs.org/itvs/storewars/), 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.
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 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.
Could you tell us a little bit about your childhood in Israel?
I grew up in a small village called Ganey Yehuda, just east of Tel Aviv, near the Ben Gurion airport. It was actually quite idyllic. Parents didn't have much say about what we did with our after-school time, as long as our grades were OK. All the kids had bicycles and we visited with each other and played sports practically every afternoon. I'm not sure when we got our homework done, but actually education levels were high enough that when I came to the U.S. for college, I got extra credits just for graduating from an Israeli high school.
What was it like to shoot this film? What difficulties did you encounter?
The girls in the film were all from remote villages, and have never been in the presence of Westerners. For a long time, they couldn't relax. It was as if a Martian dropped into your living room and asked you to ignore it and act naturally while “it” followed you around with a camera.
Gaining the kind of access I wanted to a factory—24/7 with no management trailing us around—took some time. Many factories have to sign no-media clauses in their contracts to supply clothes to the Western buyers. Our retailers don't want us to see how the clothes we buy get made. We were turned down by many factory owners. We finally got to Mr. Lam, the jeans factory owner. I better not go on the record about what illegal activities were required to get a proper introduction, but we finally did get introduced by one of his business partners, someone he completely trusted. I also had to tell him a few stories regarding what the film was about in order to get his cooperation.
Your lead character is a 16-year-old, vastly underpaid laborer. Did you focus on her with the intention of getting your message across to teens all over the world?
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.
When you see China Blue you get to know Jasmine and feel that even though she lives on the other side of the world, she could have been your next-door neighbor. Once you know Jasmine, you can no longer accept how she is treated, or any of the other millions like her.
Were there parts of the film you had to cut, but wish you could have included?
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 the cases dragged in the courts for years. We filmed heartbreaking stories, but there just wasn't room for them in the film.
How does your Jewish identity affect your work? What about your Israeli identity?
To me, part of being Jewish is being interested in the world at large, and being particularly sensitive to issues of injustice, wherever they may come up. I started in 1992 with a film about my mother's experience in Nazi Germany, and expanded my scope of interest over the years so that the last film I made is about the exploitation of workers in China. Throughout history, Jews have been at the forefront of progressive movements, and I feel proud to make a small contribution to that tradition.
Even though I've lived outside Israel for many years, and no matter how much the world is my home, I'll always continue to identify myself as an Israeli. Israel has developed a very strong tradition of excellent documentary filmmakers, whose works get shown everywhere, from international student competitions to PBS. They don't need me to tell their story.
What is the most important message you want this film to convey?
I 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 would 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.
For more information on China Blue, visit www.pbs.org/independentlens/chinablue.
To learn more about organizations that work to put an end to slave and child labor and to check out what you can do, click here:
Write to your representative:
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