Download our latest Catalogue (.pdf - 1.8 Mb)
YEAR: 2009 / DURATION: 27 MINS / DIRECTOR: Camélia Encinas / PRODUCTION: Premieres Lignes / Versions AVAILABLE: French
English script available
Previous broadcasts include SRC, SIC, Medi 1 sat, VRT and MTV
Selected for ImagéSanté Festival 2012
Fashion dictates that our jeans should look as battered and worn out as possible, before we’ve even tried them on. The scruffier they look the better, and the bigger the price tag.
Back in the day, people simply stuck their new jeans on the drive way and ran them over a few times to get that aged effect, but modern methods are a lot more sophisticated. All the leading brands are offering distressed denim, and one of the ways to achieve this effect is sandblasting.
Makes such as Levi’s manufacture a proportion of their wares in small workshops in Turkey. Far from the glamorous environs of the Galeries Lafayette or Harrods, workers toil in poorly lit premises for modest wages. Up until last spring, in order to fulfill orders for sandblasted jeans, the men were shut into cubicles where they treated as many as 500 pairs of jeans a day. They worked without protection breathing in highly toxic particles of sand.
Sandblasting is illegal within the European Union, and Turkey has now also outlawed the practice. But the damage is already done. Working in such conditions causes the incurable lung disease silicosis. Silicosis used to be known as a miners disease, it claimed hundreds and thousands of lives during the last century. Now it is back, and in much more aggressive form. It attacks suddenly, and kills faster. Official statistics list 600 sufferers in Turkey, but this could be just the tip of the iceberg. 44 workers have died, most of them less than 30 years old.
What do the multinational denim brands have to say about the devastating effects of sandblasting? And what is the fate of the textile workers affected by this terrible lung disease?
JAVA Films | 4-6 Villa Thoreton 75015 Paris - France | Tel: 33 1 40 60 26 24 | Fax: 33 1 40 60 26 49 | Website by Capital Vision