Today is the 12th anniversary of the Rana Plaza collapse.
Thanks to Ian Cook et al for links to a whole range of resources.
Fashion Revolution was founded on this day. We are in Fashion Revolution Week for 2025 at the moment.
The following is taken from Follow the Things website.“The True Cost“
A documentary film (with website) directed Andrew Morgan & executive produced by Livia Firth for Life Is My Movie Entertainment.
Available in full on YouTube (embedded above). Website here.
American filmmaker Andrew Morgan weeps in a New York Starbucks after seeing a front page newspaper story about the collapse of the Rana Plaza factory complex in Dhaka, Bangladesh where over 1,100 garment workers were crushed to death making clothes for Western high street retailers and brands. It’s illustrated with a photos two young boys looking at photos the of missing, assumed dead, workers pinned up near the site. They are the same age as his sons and are looking for their missing mum. He is shocked to his core. How could something this atrocious be allowed to happen? He imagines making a film that will answer this question and sets up a kickstarter campaign to raise the money to finance it. He doesn’t believe that there’s an individual or organisation who, alone, could have saved those people’s lives by acting differently (like consumers, for example). So he travels to lots of places in fashion’s supply chains. He talks to workers, farmers, managers, retired executives, ethical fashion pioneers, NGO execs, journalists, doctors and academics. Viewers get to know some – like Shima Akhter the garment factory worker in Bangladesh and LaRhea Pepper the cotton farmer in the USA – better than others.
He makes the argument that Rana Plaza was a systematic failure. This film’s networky trade justice activism shows how everyone in the industry could and should act differently to make things better.
Features some distressing scenes and I wouldn't use this with young students, but provides a great deal of information on the event and the context.
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