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Examines a phenomenon that truly characterizes our time. The rapid expansion of the international market place and the power of those who control it is perceived to be the principal reason why the gap between the rich and the poor is increasing, not diminishing. This viewpoint was also expressed by the thousands who demonstrated against the WTO in Seattle and Prague. On the other hand, some view globalization as being the only way for prosperity to spread to developing countries.
We all love our mobile phones. They connect us to our family and friends. But they also connect us with the Democratic Republic of Congo, one of the most dangerous places on earth. Inside our mobile phones are illegally mined minerals, minerals that fuel conflict, create child slavery, and support other severe human rights abuses in the Congo.
This riveting documentary reveals a mineral trade plagued with violence and human exploitation. The director takes on the Congolese military and corrupt warlords with barnstorming bravado to gain access to Bisie, a militia-controlled slave mine that produces cassiterite, a tin oxide used in cell phones. As many as 25,000 captive workers live there in unimaginable squalor and fear.
He takes his findings back to the Finnish mobile phone giant Nokia, a company that nets up to $1.6 billion in profits annually. His hope is that Nokia will stand behind its claim that "Sustainability is in everything we do." But Nokia refuses to acknowledge "blood" minerals are used in the manufacture of cellphones. Blood in the Mobile is a film about about human courage, and about hope and the search for solutions.
Reviews
"Blood in the Mobile brings to light important issues to consider in our race for connectivity." - Heather Haynes, programmer, Hot Docs
"A disturbing film depicts the high price in African blood paid for the convenience of cell phones, as well as the relative indifference of big corporations that do not know-or at least do not care-where their raw materials come from".
Jack David Eller, Anthropological Review Database
Google Baby is a journey across three continents telling the story of the up-and-coming baby production industry in the age of globalization. Doron, an Israeli entrepreneur with a high tech background proposes a new service - baby production. The baby producer (as he introduces himself) provides customers with a turn-key, cost effective solution using outsourcing of the surrogacy element to India as a way to lower prices. The preferred genetic material is selected by the clients and the rest is left in the hands of the producer: sperm and eggs are purchased online and multiple embryos are produced and frozen. Packed in liquid nitrogen, only the embryos that fit the customers' preferences are shipped to India where they are implanted into the wombs of local women. These surrogates are kept in a closed clinic under constant supervision by Dr. Nanya Patel. She sees her participation as sisterly, "one woman helping another." The customers arrive at the end of the nine month pregnancy period to pick up their babies.
In the 60's, the introduction of the contraceptive pill turned sex into an act independent of the risk of pregnancy. Today, technology has turned 'making a baby' into an act independent of sex. Globalization is making "baby producing" affordable - and all one needs is a credit card.
The film raises many issues but the presentation is non-judgmental. Discussions of medical ethics, racism, and exploitation may follow. A valuable addition for women's studies, bioethics, and globalization courses.
Reviews
"A compelling documentary. An amazingly neutral hand as Ms. Brand Frank deftly avoids the cliches that typically materialize in any journalistic look at atypical reproduction." - The New York Times
"Will freeing sex and propagation from traditional blood-bound structures like race and family, lead to a new understanding of mankind, or are we just shifting onto another level of racism and colonialism? Brilliantly made, "Google Baby" raises scary questions of our time..." - Docaviv
Awards
International Emmy Award for News & Documentary, Outstanding Science and Technology Programming - 2011
Best Film Award, Docaviv International Film Festival - 2009
At a call center in the Indian city of Hyderabad, work starts at 8 P.M. India time. It's morning in the U.S., when America is beginning to work. A business directory, "The American Yellow Pages," similar to the original "Yellow Pages," has outsourced their telemarketing to India. Kabith is the Indian executive-in-charge, trying to build his career as a call center tycoon. He has hired 75 new sales agents to sell listings for several hundred dollars. The problem is that listings in the competitive directory are free.
Equipped with new American names and rudimentary English, they begin to pursue customers. Confusion reigns supreme, no sales are made. As the agents frantically dial, fearing the loss of their precious jobs, Kabith grows increasingly desperate. New agents are hired, scolded, and fired. One young woman is promoted to deputy manager thanks to her relentless efforts to train the newcomers to speak with an American accent, to get their initial pitch on target, and to avoid hang-ups. She likes working in the call center "...because moneywise it's a very good industry" and she wants to be independent from her parents.
Two million young Indians work in the call center industry. How can American workers compete with them when they cost five times more than Indian workers? This is the frontier of globalization.
With breathtaking clarity, renowned University of Massachusetts Economics Professor Richard Wolff breaks down the root causes of today's economic crisis, showing how it was decades in the making and in fact reflects seismic failures within the structures of American-style capitalism itself. Wolff traces the source of the economic crisis to the 1970s, when wages began to stagnate and American workers were forced into a dysfunctional spiral of borrowing and debt that ultimately exploded in the mortgage meltdown. By placing the crisis within this larger historical and systemic frame, Wolff argues convincingly that the proposed government "bailouts," stimulus packages, and calls for increased market regulation will not be enough to address the real causes of the crisis, in the end suggesting that far more fundamental change will be necessary to avoid future catastrophes.
Richly illustrated with graphics and charts, this is a superb introduction that allows ordinary citizens to comprehend, and react to, the unraveling crisis.
Review
"With unerring coherence and unequaled breadth of knowledge, Rick Wolff offers a rich and much needed corrective to the views of mainstream economists and pundits. It would be difficult to come away from this viewing with anything but an acute appreciation of what is needed to get us out of this mess." - Stanley Aronowitz, Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Urban Education, City University
Globalisation has resulted in increased competition for Australian businesses and sometimes this is seen as a negative. But whether a business decides to stay local or branch out internationally can be the deciding factor in its survival. There are numerous Australian businesses that are successfully competing in international markets and one of the best is Intrepid Travel.
In this program we introduce the concept of transnational corporations and multinational corporations and then look specifically at Intrepid Travel's niche beginnings and growth, their global moves, evidence of success and what's in store for the business's future. Along the way, we hear from the cofounders of the business, director Geoff Manchester and chief executive officer Darrell Wade. This is an exciting, practical and information-packed insight into Australian business at the international level.
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The new India has a high-tech, highly-skilled economy growing at an incredible nine per cent a year. Its universities are churning out thousands of highly qualified science and computer graduates working in software, biotechnology and engineering firms in metropolitan India. Yet underneath the glittering surface of the boom lie some ugly realties of modern day India.
The film follows a well-known Indian journalist who questions the social stability of the economic giant. In urban centers there are still millions of homeless who live on the pavement as they have for the last thirty years.
In rural areas, where three quarters of the population live, the poverty is more hidden. Farmers are deeply in debt because they cannot overcome the imbalance between the high cost of farming and the low minimum prices the government sets for their crops. Hundreds of thousands of desperate farmers have been driven to suicide. M.S. Swaminathan, the founder of India's original Green Revolution predicts a violent uprising if millions of farmers become landless
Another volatile issue is the widespread discrimination against the Muslim minority which numbers 150 million. Hindu nationalism is on the rise and Muslims struggle for employment and are excluded from buying property. And within the Hindu society the caste system remains a barrier separating the rich and the poor. Despite the government's attempt at affirmative action in education and employment, the age-old discrimination against the untouchables or dalits continues. They are condemned to a life of servitude
India's economy is powering ahead. The ultra rich live behind electrified fences in self-contained communities away from the degradation, poverty and despair of the rest of India.
Mainak Bhaumik's film provides insight into India's often-overlooked Chinese population, examining the thriving Chinatown in Kolkata, Bengal. There, skilled Chinese immigrants have historically established themselves in business Despecially tanneries and shoemaking - and created a unique Indo-Chinese cuisine. Exploring the factors that make up Chinese-Indian identity, the film looks at the Indian cultural stereotypes of Chinese immigrants and the effects of government resettling of Chinese-Indians during the 1962 border conflict between the two countries. A portrait emerges of a hardworking and traditionally enclosed immigrant community, but one that is becoming increasingly assimilated with mainstream Indian culture. Melting Wok pays attention to the unique contributions and experiences of Chinese-Indians, while also helping the audience to understand the larger phenomena of immigration and cultural identity.
The Indian software outsourcing industry has emerged as a key node of the global economy. The series of ethnographic films, Coding Culture, explores the cultures of outsourced work and the moulding of a new workforce to cater to this global high-tech services industry. Each of the three films focuses on a single company, representing one of the major types of software company found in Bangalore: a medium-sized Indian-owned company software services company (Mphasis: The 'M' Way); the offshore software development centre of a U.S.-based IT company (Sun Microsystems: Fun@Sun); and a small 'cross-border' startup company that produces its own software products and markets them to global customers (July Systems: July Boys). All three companies are engaged in the production of software products or services for markets outside of India, but the nature of their work and their position in the global economy differ, producing significant variations in their cultures of work. Each film revolves around a distinct theme that is central to the outsourcing industry as a whole, but that also has wider sociological significance: the systems of time and people management that are typical of these new global workplaces; the functioning of multicultural 'virtual teams' and the absorption of Indian software engineers into a global corporate culture; and the new identities that are emerging in this highly transnational sector of the Indian economy.
Fun@Sun: Making of a Global Workplace
Fun@Sun is an inside look at work and work culture in the software development centre of a large American multinational company, Sun Microsystems, located in Bangalore (Indian Engineering Centre, or IEC). The film highlights the multiple ways in which 'culture' operates as a management tool in the new global economy. In offshore centres such as IEC, work is organised through 'virtual teams' comprised of software engineers and managers located in Bangalore and Santa Clara, U.S.A. To integrate their employees and sites across cultural and geographical space, Sun attempts to initiate the Indian software engineers into Sun's corporate culture. The film depicts the techniques through which this American-style work culture is transplanted into the Indian subsidiary, such as induction programmes and 'soft skills' training programmes.
The film also points to the contradictory ways in which 'culture' is invoked in the global corporate workplace: while cultural sensitivity training programmes validate cultural difference, Indian software engineers are expected to conform to the dominant model of global corporate culture by learning appropriate communication and behaviourial styles.
The 'M' Way: Time + People = Money
The 'M' Way was shot inside MphasiS-BFL Limited, a medium-sized Indian IT services company that typifies this highly competitive business, in which the provision of high quality and low-cost service is key to attracting and retaining customers. The film focuses on two teams - a software development team and a quality control (testing) team - that work on a project for a U.S.-based customer. The candid footage and interviews convey the high-pressure work atmosphere that prevails in this industry, especially due to the need for tight control over the work process and for coordination of activities within and between teams and with the customer site.
Two main themes are foregrounded in the film: the complex systems of time and quality control through which software projects are managed, and the techniques of people ('resource') management that are employed - especially how software engineers are motivated to identify with the company's goals and to work longer hours.
July Boys: New Global Players
July Boys focuses on a small 'startup' company in Bangalore that designs and produces software products for cellular service providers in Europe and the U.S. Turning the tables on the usual outsourcing story, July Systems has leveraged U.S.-based venture capital and Indian technical expertise to break into the latest high-tech markets.
The film explores the creation of a Silicon Valley-style work culture within this 'cross-border' company that has one leg in Bangalore and the other in Santa Clara, California. It also highlights the emergence of new kinds of identities (global, transnational, cosmopolitan) that incorporate and transcend pre-existing identities such as the national and the regional. But the narratives of the film's characters reveal a tension between their assumed global subjectivity and their nationalist pride in July's achievements as a company founded and run by Indians that makes 'cutting edge products' for the global market.
Globalisation offers many benefits to be enjoyed, but not all nations have benefited equally. There are vast differences in living standards and income around the world and this program explains these differences. People in industrialised countries live longer, more comfortable lives than ever before, whilst in poorer countries thousands die each year from preventable diseases such as measles and malaria.
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This film explores a new phenomenon in the global economy. The toll-free telephone numbers used to place orders or get information are often answered thousands of miles away, by Indians impersonating local operators. Whether a New Yorker calls American Express or an English housewife calls Harrods, the calls may be re-routed, answered by Indians trained to speak and even think like Americans, or Brits or Australians
Diverted to Delhi follows a group of university graduates through a rigorous crash course which they hope will prepare them for prestigious, well paying positions in these call centers. Over a three- week period, they will attempt to improve their English language and presentation skills, change their names, modify their accents and put aside their own cultural identities as they learn to speak and think like their international callers. This adds a new cultural dimension to "globalization."
Over 200 of the U.S. Fortune 500 companies choose to service their clients via Indian call centers.This has ramifications on the Western economies. These service jobs have left their countries of origin, contributing to unemployment in the West. But to the businesses who use them, it is an increasingly attractive proposition-- the technology is instantaneous and the labor and set-up costs are low, yet the staff is keen, highly educated and available around the clock.
Review
"Adults of all ages will be intrigued to examine the global economy with new eyes. A highly recommended purchase for academic and large public libraries." - Susan C. Awe, for Educational Media Reviews Online
Over the past eight years world famous Swedish auto maker Volvo has gained a foothold in the South American market by establishing a major manufacturing plant in Brazil.
The program explores:
Why Volvo sought to expand its global business by building its plant where it did, including geographical, operational, human resource and political considerations;
How Volvo seeks to create a positive work environment for staff; ¡P Environmental initiatives and objectives; ¡P Community initiatives.
The company's contribution to Volvo's global business
How the plant is managed. Appearing on camera is Volvo's South American director Carlos Morassutti.
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Globalisation refers to the way the individual nations of the world are becoming more connected with each other, and in the process more interdependent. Using various case studies, this program investigates the nature of globalisation and the global economy. We see how financial markets in New York affect a farmer on the other side of the world. Other issues of the Global Economy examined are trade and financial flows, free trade and protection, trading blocs and agreements, and international economic organisations.
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From humble beginnings in 1942 when Clarrie Mance started the business, Windsor Smith has grown to become one of the country's most prominent and successful footwear companies. This program focuses on the four key elements that make up Windsor Smith's marketing mix and are often described as the 'four Ps': product, price, place and promotion. The program looks at each of these areas in relation to the high profile marketing campaigns conducted by the company. Reference is also made to marketing objectives, market research, the target market and marketing channels.
Review
"The presenter will appeal to students... She speaks naturally, and with a lot of expression... It will be easy for a teacher to expand on each section of the video during showing..." - Lyn Chisholm, VET Business Coordinator, Claremont College, TAS.
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Globalisation has had major effects on Australian companies and the consumers of their products. In this ground breaking study of one of our most fascinating companies, we see how globalisation:
forced Rip Curl to manufacture overseas
heightens competition between suppliers pressures companies to go public in order to increase fi nance for expansion
creates special problems because of currency movements makes companies even more subject to constant and rapid change
forces improvements in quality and effi ciency brings up major issues related to brand protection, political instability, treatment of low wage workers and cultural differences A great program for teachers and students of Business Management and Business Studies.
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What happens to all those old clothes you bring to the Salvation Army or Goodwill Industries? This comprehensive program is about Third World debt and secondhand clothes. The filmmaker travelled to Zambia and was amazed to find almost everyone wearing Calvin Klein, MTV and James Dean t-shirts!
Huge bales of American secondhand clothing are sold to African importers, putting the African manufacturers out of business. We see a secondhand clothing dealer in Zambia carefully select a bale among dozens, bundled and shipped from abroad. He pays for the used clothing and then transports it by bus ten hours to a market. His meager profits support his entire extended family who subsist in shanty towns miles from the market. Their lives exemplify the poverty plaguing Africa today. They have virtually no possibility of advancing themselves and their children.
Prof. Jeffrey Sachs, Harvard University Center for International Studies and other experts discuss the history of colonialism, slavery and the depletion of Africa's natural resources. They draw the connection between this shameful legacy and the current huge debt. As the African governments service their debts according to an IMF/World Bank policy known as "structural adjustment lending," people's benefits are slashed drastically, resulting in terrible suffering from malnutrition, poor healthcare, inadequate schools and a crumbling infra-structure. Our old t-shirts come with a high price-tag.
A presentation of the Independent Television Service (itvs). Partially funded by the Soros Documentary Fund of the Open Society Institute and the International Foundation for Arts and Culture.
Reviews
"Highly recommended." - Educational Media Reviews Online
"It is by far the best video I have seen for showing the downside of globalisation for under-developed countries" - Prof. Norman Etherington, University of Western Australia
"As the journey of our old t-shirts illustrates, the world is small and interconnected...Highly recommended." - MC Journal: The Journal of Academic Media Librarianship
Notes
Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, 2002
Buenos Aires International Independent Film Festival, 2002
"Through an African Lens" Film Festival, 2002
Awards
Best Documentary, Human Rights and Justice, Vermont International Film Festival, 2001
Best Documentary, Atlanta Film Festival, 2001
Certificate of Merit, San Francisco International Film Festival, 2001
This documentary tells the story in a visually exciting way of the fascinating world of the international banana trade with all of its moral implications. World trade in bananas is dominated by major companies such as Chiquita, Dole and Del Monte. They have used a shocking level of pesticide, causing serious illness among the workers and depleting the rain forest. At the urging of some small scale banana producers, a European initiative called Agrofair began to produce people friendly and environmental friendly crops, known as Oke Fair-Trade bananas.
Thus began the banana wars. Price cutting, attempts at union busting, monopolizing overseas transportation were but a few of the weapons used by the transnationals. Will the Oke Fair Trade banana survive on the battlefield of profit and politics?
DVD / 2000 / High School, College, Adult / 50 minutes
Coffee ranks second only to oil as the most important raw material on the world market. It has shaped the economies, history and social structure of a large part of Latin America. Composed of archival photographs, old newsreels and penetrating interviews, this documentary takes a broad view of the influence of coffee through the ages.
First introduced in the eighteenth century, coffee is now the most popular drink in the world after water. South America supplies 66% of the world production, although most of the profits go to traders and speculators outside the region. The film explains the difference between the Brazilian and Costa Rican system of production, and why the Brazilian system has led to such poverty. Mechanization of farms has thrown many rural laborers out of work, an explosive situation in a country where one percent of the population owns 46% of the land.
Nobel Peace Prize winner Oscar Arias and economist Celso Furtado analyze the market forces that affect coffee prices. An important film for economics and Latin American studies.
DVD / 1999 / High School, College, Adult / 52 minutes
The nomadic goat herders of Mongolia, who live on the plains southwest of Ulan Bator, are thriving in the new economic climate. Long controlled by the government, wool from the cashmere goats is now on the free market. Here, on the broad plateau, the sale of large volumes of fine cashmere wool is negotiated between tribespeople and traders.
We get a close- up look at several nomadic families whose traditional ways have been changing. Riyshya traded his wool for a stylish new motor bike on which he proudly cruises the plateau. Clearly, new commodities are being introduced. Rice, which had always been scarce, has become part of the staple diet. The small community has established its own school, so children no longer have to travel long distances daily.
Among the herders, all important matters are discussed together as a group. The film provides a fascinating insight into a traditional community successfully adapting to changing times.
DVD / 1999 / High School, College, Adult / 24 minutes
In Advertising & the End of the World, Sut Jhally, exposes the inherent conflict between commercial culture - as aggressively sold by private, global media systems - and environmental stewardship. This powerful program goes beyond simply critiquing commercial images to challenge us to evaluate the costs of consumer society and how we participate in it.
Review
"Like a martial artist who deftly redirects his assailant's energies, Sut Jhally turns Madison Avenue against itself." NANCY FOLBRE - University of Massachusetts
DVD (With English, Spanish Subtitles) / 1997 / 40 minutes
This astonishing documentary investigates how an advertising slogan invented by Madison Avenue executives in 1948 has come to define our most intimate and romantic rituals and ideals. The Diamond Empire, which sent shockwaves through the transnational diamond industry when it first appeared, systematically takes apart the myth that "diamonds are forever."
It exposes how one white South African family, through a process of monopoly and fantasy, managed to exert control over the global flow of diamonds and change the very way we think about courtship, marriage, and love - an achievement all the more stunning given that diamonds are in fact neither scarce nor imperishable. Zeroing in on how "the diamond empire" managed to convert something valueless into one of the most coveted commodities in history, the film provides a riveting look at how marketing and consumer culture shape not only global trade and economics, but also our very identities.
Reviews
"In all my years of teaching, this is the single most important video I have ever shown. No film has proven as successful in showing students how a major part of their identities has been constructed by a corporate, commercial culture. This movie changes the way we see the world." - Sut Jhally, Department of Communications, Umass Amherst
Three generations of the extended Roychowdury family have resided for decades at 160 Bakul Bagan Road, Calcutta. Every now and then one of it's members has to leave the landscape of their childhood - a large sprawling house built around a courtyard and all the affection that dozens of relatives surround them with, to relocate for a job or to start a family elsewhere. In Leaving Bakul Bagan, Saborna, a 20 year-old girl prepares to leave for higher studies in the United States. The film is an intimate portrayal of her interactions with her family during her last few days at home. It is full of casual conversational humor and vignettes from typical familial interactions. Incidental to the time and woven into the film are the effects of race riots throughout India in the aftermath of the destruction of a Mosque by Hindu fanatics. This incident precipitates an already brewing political debate about the ethics of leaving for America, especially on the eve of such a tragic political disaster. The very last scene, rendered in slow motion to heighten it's sensibility, effectively creates a sense of deep loss and the feeling that the need for familial roots are indeed pan-ethnic and trans-cultural. Even though shot in cinema-verite style, Leaving Bakul Bagan has the grace and the flow of a dramatic narrative.
Festivals
Best of Category, New England Film and Video Festival, 1994
Special Invitation, 40th Flaherty Film Seminar, 1994
RAI, University of Kent Festival of Ethnographic Films, 1994
Whitney Museum Tour, New York, Bombay, New Delhi, 1994
The ecological footprint - this is the mark on the earth left behind by each person based on the amount of resources they have consumed. If the strain we put on natural resources continues at the present rate, the earth will no longer be able to support its inhabitants. This program examines possible solutions and asks the question: is it too late?
This program examines evidence of global change from the aspect of what has been induced by human activities and what is a result of natural process. An explanation of how each of the earth's ecosystems is tied together reveals why changes in one affect the others. The program also uses evidence of past global change to predict what we can expect in the future.
This program looks at atmospheric and biodiversity change and the global warming phenomenon. We investigate the effects of pollution on various ecosystems and why the Arctic has been affected by pollution from Southeast Asia, helping us understand how our local activities may be affecting people on the other side of the world for years to come.