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80 mins - A film by True Vision (London), produced by Brian Edwards and Kate Blewett
Inspired by Free the Slaves
President Kevin Bales' award-winning book Disposable People, exposes
cases of slavery around the world. Filmmakers Brian Edwards and Kate Blewett actually buy slaves in Africa
and help free child slaves in India. The film exposes slavery in the
rug-making sector of Northwest India, the cocoa plantations in the
Ivory Coast, and even the home of a World Bank official in Washington,
D.C. Small, personal stories of slavery are woven together to tell the
larger story of slavery in the global economy.
'Slavery' won the Peabody Award in 2001.
Slavery is officially banned internationally by
all countries, yet despite this there are more slaves in the world
today than ever before. In the four hundred years of the legal slave
trade around 13 million people were shipped from Africa. Today there
are an estimated 27 million slaves - people paid no money, locked away
and controlled by violence. Multi-Award winning documentary makers Kate
Blewett and Brian Woods - this terrible exploitation with their own
eyes.
This film explores three separate industries where slaves are
still to be found: the carpet industry in northern India, the cocoa
industry in the Ivory Coast, and domestic slavery in Britain and the
U.S. At present, approximately 4000-5000 children are missing from
Northern Bihar, India. Amongst the missing is Huro, a boy who
disappeared at six years old, and hasn't been seen by his family in
over five years. The cocoa industry of Cote d'Ivoire produces nearly
half the world's supply (over 100 million tons) grown on thousands of
small plantations where young men are worked up to eighteen hours a
day, unpaid, and beaten if they try to escape. Kate and Brian interview
slaves still working in the plantations, as well as a group of young
men who had been rescued just days before. Most people imagine that
slavery is only found in the developing world, a long way from Western
democratic capitals. Kate and Brian found slavery in both Washington
and London. A woman named Dora in Washington and another named Reshma
in London both tell stories of cruelty, long hours and no payment. Both
wish, in their own courageous way, to bring to the public's attention
the wrong that has been done to them in order to prevent such abuses
happening in the future.
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