Mardi Gras: Made in China

By Cyril Pearl -- Video Business, 6/16/2008

CARNIVALESQUE
Street: July 29
Prebook: July 4
> Look at Chinese manufacturers of Mardi Gras beads for the West’s hedonistic celebration.

The effects of globalization and the 1978 free market reform in China play key roles in this fascinating documentary that follows the path of the manufacturing of colorful Mardi Gras beads in the Tai Kuen Bead Factory in Fuzhou, China, to their ultimate destination on the streets of New Orleans during the annual Mardi Gras celebration. The factory—which runs 24 hours a day (with the exception of a two-week annual closing to celebrate Chinese New Year)—employs mostly female teenagers who work 14- to 18-hour days for 10¢ an hour to create the beads that end up in K-Mart and Wal-Mart before getting tossed about at Mardi Gras. Director David Redmon bounces back and forth between the sweatshop-like factory footage and interviews with workers and supervisors to the U.S. distributors and vendors and Mardi Gras partiers (mostly college kids). The contrasts between the factory’s physical labor and New Orleans’ physical fun is obvious, but the overall film works on a subtler, more conscience-stirring level.

Shelf Talk: Available in two different versions (48 minutes and 74 minutes), Mardi Gras: Made in China is a good pick for institutional markets and would certainly qualify as required viewing for human rights groups. It also can be recommended to documentary lovers who’ve enjoyed such recent globalization-themed entries as Mondovino and This is What Democracy Looks Like.

Documentary, color, NR (mature themes), 74 min./48 min., DVD $19.95
Extras: deleted scenes, additional interviews, worker’s diary
Director: David Redmon
First Run: L, March 2006, <$1 mil.