Introduced by Orville Schell

Orville Schell is dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley. He is the author of fourteen books, nine of them about China, and a contributor to numerous edited volumes.

The cord that connects Third World labor and First World leisure is never more apparent than in David Redmon's sharp exposé of globalization and its effects, which zeroes in on an example that most critics would never have imagined. The largest Mardi Gras bead factory in the world is located in Fuzhou, China, powered by a workforce of young women kept in line by twelve-hour days and a Dickensian level of discipline. With unprecedented access to the factory and its workers, Redmon captures the day-to-day realities of life in the “New China”; needless to say, these interviews and images provide a stark contrast to the “realities” of Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras, where drunken revelers are more concerned with breasts and booze than with the inequities of global trade. “Redmon's sly, engrossing documentary is an expert riposte to smug proponents of globalization,” writes Jessica Winter in the Village Voice. “Thomas Friedman and your fellow flat-earthers! Watch this movie!”