The Cotton Film : Dirty White Gold

Note: Our Crowdfund has now finished. Huge thanks to everyone who has supported the film. If  you'd like to help please email   and we can send you details. All rewards are still available and we are, of course, happy to speak about other ways we can work for change together. 

We'd like you to come with us on a shopping trip to India.

The journey starts with nearly 300,000 Indian farmers who have killed themselves to escape debt. At one point, up to 26 per day. They are the price we pay for cheap cotton - trapped in a cycle of debt, brought about as a result of the industrialisation of their livelihoods. Some kill themselves by drinking the pesticides with which they farm.

At the heart of the film will be the human stories of the people who work the fields to form the threads of our moral fibre. We will ask "when you bag a bargain, who pays for it?”

Documentary journalist and troublemaker Leah Borromeo is making a film about fashion and its real victims. She is on a mission – she wants to make ethics and sustainability in the fashion industry the norm, not the exception, by making the supply chain transparent.  And she is on a journey to find out how to make this a reality.

Leah will follow the thread of our clothing from seed to shop - from farmers to brokers and bankers to the factories and manufacturers through to the labels we love to wear. She’ll show the environmental and social impact of the intense use of pesticides, will engage in the debate around genetically modified seed, investigate the concept of fair trade, explore the viability of organic cotton and probe the structures that make the rich rich and the poor poor. She’ll emphasise the need for traceability and accountability in the fashion industry.

The journey ends with us – and what we can do not just to look good, but do good. So, this is a campaigning film, but not one which hits you with a worthy stick.  Leah’s a troublemaking Situationist journalist and friend to The Yes Men, Reverend Billy and the Space Hijackers. She never does things by halves and so the film  will be quirky, funny and have a subversive twist. Think Newsnight meets the Yes Men.

"A funny, poetic film about cotton's dark secrets? Bring on Dirty White Gold. A movie like this can let far more of us know the political economy behind what we wear. And although knowledge is the first step to action, the brilliance of this film is that it also shows action! So it's not only action, it leads by example. Get it made!"  -- Mike Bonanno, The Yes Men

"We are all implicated in the terrible conditions that Indian cotton farmers work in. Behind the glitzy surface of our high street shops are the desperate lives of Indian farmers. Many end in suicide. This important film directed by Leah Borromeo shows us the reality of the blood soaked cotton we wear and its origins we prefer not to think about. It is vital that this film gets made so that we become unavoidably conscious of our human connection as consumers of cotton to the tragedy that is engulfing its producers."  -- Peter Kennard

Want to be in on the game? You can make it happen: every £1 you give now will unlock another £3.

Here's the financial score: A big private foundation is willing to put in £25,000, but that's only if we can match it. We have already raised £10,000 from a film development fund – so we need a further £15,000* to raise the £25,000 to unlock the match fund, which will give us a grand total of £50,000.

The team behind the film has a pretty good track record in making films which help change the world and, working with NGOs and advocacy groups, devising the distribution and outreach strategies to help achieve this ambition. But we do need to get the funds to get started.

We’re offering incentives which we think have real value  - of course there is a bit of a donation involved, but there is a great designer T-shirt (in organic cotton) by Barnbrook, a limited edition print from photomontage artist Peter Kennard and, of course, the first DVDs or downloads of the film. And everyone who donates will get a free download of Dr D's exclusive artwork "Rotten Cotton" [if you'd like a signed piece, we can arrange that too - just check the rewards list for how].

How serious are we?

Leah Borromeo, the film's director, says, "This isn't a sombre documentary that will throw guilt trips at you. We're going into the darkest heart of the fashion industry and bringing you stories glossy adverts would rather not show you. We have a sense of humour - and it's an uncomfortable one because we won't sell you rainbows. We will make you angry and we want to use that to engage you. We're serious about the issues and serious about changing the playing field so people don't have to kill themselves to make our clothes. When you leave the cinema, we don't want you to say "oh dear, such poor poor people". We want you to say "let's do something about this." 

This film is a Dartmouth Films production in association with The Cotton Film Company. Dartmouth has a long history of award-winning social change documentaries that make a difference from "The End of the Line" and "Fire In the Blood" through to "The Battle for Barking" and John Pilger's "The War You Don't See".

So how serious? Read this: www.newint.org/blog/2012/10/10/india-cotton-farmers and urbantimes.co/2012/10/cotton-film-dirty-white-gold

"Dirty White Gold exposes the dirty secrets that we walk around with on our backs every day.  This is a kick ass film highlighting the systematic violence that we dress ourselves in everyday. It does more than piss you off, it changes how you understand your connection to the world and the people who live in it. Borromeo is one badass troublemaker. She gets to the point, she makes it and she does something about it. We dread to think what she'll do if this film doesn't get funded. So help a sister out." - The Space Hijackers

The Team

The Director: Leah Borromeo. A former foreign news editor at Sky News, Leah brings over a decade’s experience in broadcast journalism and a Live Art degree to documentary. Having recently finished a commission of ten short films on arts activism for Channel 4’s Random Acts, she’s mashing up solid newsgathering with a keen eye for the creative and the absurd. She is also a contributor to the likes of The Guardian, the Index on Censorship, the British Journal of Photography, Juxtapoz Magazine and a host of print and broadcast outlets from Canada to China and New Zealand.

The Director of Photography: James Demuth. Jim worked as an in-house senior editor and producer for Vice.com for four years before going freelance. He is now a documentary director / shooter / editor working out of a studio in Hackney Downs - mainly working in the short film format. He edited the feature film Swansea Love Story and has had work featured at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. He has two cats with as many braincells between them.

The Executive Producers:

Christopher Hird is known for some of the most successful campaign documentaries in recent years. Successes include Rupert Murray's multi-award-winning The End of the Line, which revealed that the world will run out of fish by the middle of this century unless we do something about it; The War You Don’t See, presented by John Pilger; and The Flaw, the untold story of the credit bubble which caused the financial crash.

Emily James is an award-winning filmmaker once described as a "genius" by the Guardian. Having recently completed Just Do It - a feature-length documentary getting under the skin of climate activists which has played in cinemas all over the world. Emily is a graduate of the NFTS, has extensive experience in film and television and brings a wealth of practical and critical working knowledge to this project.

Others on board:

The UNEP, The Yes Men, Reverend Billy and choir, Space Hijackers, Barnbrook, Peter Kennard, Dr D, Popbitch, Goodone, Alexandra Groover, the Ethical Fashion Forum, THTC, Pesticides Action Network, The Otesha Project, Bleeding Cool, Bhopal Medical Appeal, Souled Out Studios, War Boutique, Sabcat, Northern Comfort, The Organic Textile Company, The Brand Trust, Born to Kiln & many more. [Drop us a line if you want to get involved with the film and/or the little naughty plan we have up our sleeves.... ]

If you want to find out more about the Souled Out Studios sale in aid of this film [where you can pick up some sick originals, one-offs and limited editions from Beejoir, Luc Price, MauMau etc], pls head here:

souledoutstudios.com/soshome.html

 

Follow us:

@dirtywhitegold

www.facebook.com/dirtywhitegoldfilm

*Our target here is £18,000 as we need to raise the £15,000 to make £25,000 plus an extra £3000 to cover the material costs of the rewards we are offering and also the VAT we will have to pay on the money we raise through this appeal.   

All the money raised will be used to cover the costs of production, develop the project further, hire crews in the UK and in India for upcoming shoots, build partnerships, raise awareness and develop narratives around the issue.