By DeNeen L. Brown
Washington Post Staff Writer
"Call + Response," a documentary that seeks to uncover contemporary human slavery in its many forms, opens with a sequence showing four men in a taxi heading to a bachelor party. They are almost giddy, anticipating what they will do and what will be done to them. The taxi swings through the streets of a nondescript Asian city with neon lights and billboards. As they near their destination, the men become even more excited.
But the viewer senses that something is extra wrong. The men walk up some steps and open a door.
And in the middle of a white bed sits a small girl, head lowered, black hair covering her face. Someone has placed her on the bed to service the men. They are appalled: "What kind of place is this?" one of them asks.
The camera moves quickly out of the dingy room.
Another country, another scene: Indian women in white robes are stacking bricks in a dusty alcove.
One woman, her body bent, stops work and stares at the camera. Her face is a distant blur. For a moment, you wonder if she sees any hope in the fact that a camera is there to peel back the cover on human trafficking, which exists in places where we look but do not see.
A white-shirted overseer steps between the woman and the camera: "If they want to leave, we won't let them. This is how I've run my business for 25 years now," he says, grinning as three women walk past with bricks piled on their heads.
The film, which opens today in two Washington area theaters and next week in two more, is a harrowing "rockumentary" built on difficult images interspersed with musical performances that are meant to give voice to the oppressed -- as music often has -- and spread their cries for freedom. It travels to places both urban and rural to reveal what it calls the world's "27 million dirtiest secrets," 27 million people held in bondage in brothels, fields, factories and homes perhaps not far from yours.
So we see Natasha Bedingfield on a black stage. On a screen behind her, a child digs in the dirt. "Incompatible," Bedingfield sings to the clear acoustics of a guitar. "It don't matter though, 'cause someone's bound to hear my cry." Drawing on the spontaneous call-and-response tradition of African religion and music, director Justin Dillon says the film is a summons to audiences in hope that they will answer by starting a modern abolitionist movement.
The film goes undercover in the brothels of Cambodia, the brick kilns of India and near the dead lakes of Ghana to reveal that in 2008, the slave trade that we hoped was halted in the 1800s with emancipation in the United States and elsewhere is alive and escalating, feeding the dark side of globalization. The State Department estimates that at least 800,000 people of all ages are sold across borders each year, many of them to make products we use, wear or eat without knowing the origin.
"There are more slaves today than ever before in human history," Dillon said in an interview. "In 2007, slave traders made more money than Google, Nike and Starbucks combined."
We keep hoping that his camera will liberate the slaves. Instead, it moves from one terrible scene to the next.
A man with a hidden camera is ushered through the streets of an Asian city, down an alley, through a curtain and into a room where four girls sit. "You can do boom-boom?" he asks the tallest girl.
"Yeah. It's okay," says the girl, who calls herself Yang. Her voice is as certain as if the man had asked for a cup of water.
We listen to child soldiers tell about being made to kill and rape and steal. We sit on the sofa with a woman in Europe who describes how her captors threatened to kill her daughter if she didn't sell her body. We glide along a man-made lake in Ghana. Tree limbs emerge from the water like the fingers of a dead man.
Actress and activist Julia Ormond appears on-screen, explaining that this is "the second largest man-made lake on the planet. When they made the lake, they flooded a certain area but they didn't clear the trees. So . . . the fishermen who go out there, their nets are constantly tangling in the tree stumps." The children are forced to dive down and free the nets. "They discovered the child slavery there," she says, "because of the number of children's bodies that were constantly washing up on the shore."
Ormond explains that some of the lake children have been rescued. The camera, with its hope that more can be rescued, moves inside a classroom, where rescued children sing.
"One of the few things that identified these kids was their inability to smile," Ormond recalled in an interview. "These children sang, 'If you are happy and you know it clap your hands.' And none of them can smile."
Other participants include former secretary of state Madeleine Albright and scholar Cornel West.
In a melodic historical lecture, West tells Dillon why music has been such a strong force of liberation. "The only property slaves had was what? Their voices in their bodies. They held hands and they raised their voices. And call and response. Call and response. Lifting every voice, because at least at that moment you have a power and a dignity," he explains. "In the dark, when you couldn't see each other, all you had was your voices being raised so somebody in the world now or further down the line would hear your voice and recognize you are human, you have a right to be treated a certain kind of way and you are worthy of attention. The worst thing for all of us as human beings to feel is insignificant. Then we experience extinction."
The film pulls back the curtain on what we didn't know -- or believed we didn't know -- about contemporary slavery.
"We have boxes where we put things," Dillon said. "We have a box on slavery that is already . . . put on a shelf because it is history for us, for many people. There really is a new box. Part of the purpose of the film is to help the public open that box."
Often, he said, people who face the horror of human trafficking move from being oblivious to the paralysis of despair. The next thing to set in is apathy.
"It is a cycle of 'I need to see it. I don't want to see it. I need to know about it. I don't want to know about it,' " Dillon said. " 'I'm indignant. I'm upset. But what am I supposed to do about it?' "
Dillon, a musician, said that was his reaction when he became aware of human trafficking while touring with a band in Russia. The women who translated for the musicians told of job offers in the United States and, thinking that their stories didn't add up, Dillon asked to see his translator's contract. They tried calling several times, he said, and when nobody picked up, he warned the translator that those job offers might be a trap.
"We were telling someone, 'Run for your life,' and she was like, 'No, I'll take my chances,' " Dillon recalled. "That's what got me."
When Dillon returned home, he contacted nonprofit agencies that combat human trafficking. "I said, 'I'm a musician. I'm not famous. I'd like to help. I'll do anything I can.' They said, 'What can you do?' I said, 'I can put on a concert, a fundraiser.' "
One concert became several concerts, and they evolved into the film project, paid for with donations. Dillon said that all of the profits will go to projects such as buying a vehicle for a rehab camp that helps child soldiers.
"Our goal is to fund and celebrate projects. We are closing the loop by allowing viewers to become participants in the solution," he said. "We don't let people out of the theaters until they can already begin responding."
Audience members may donate on the spot or request more information. Dillon said the film becomes a social contract, leaving viewers with this question about human slavery:
Now that you know, how will you respond?
But the viewer senses that something is extra wrong. The men walk up some steps and open a door.
And in the middle of a white bed sits a small girl, head lowered, black hair covering her face. Someone has placed her on the bed to service the men. They are appalled: "What kind of place is this?" one of them asks.
The camera moves quickly out of the dingy room.
Another country, another scene: Indian women in white robes are stacking bricks in a dusty alcove.
One woman, her body bent, stops work and stares at the camera. Her face is a distant blur. For a moment, you wonder if she sees any hope in the fact that a camera is there to peel back the cover on human trafficking, which exists in places where we look but do not see.
A white-shirted overseer steps between the woman and the camera: "If they want to leave, we won't let them. This is how I've run my business for 25 years now," he says, grinning as three women walk past with bricks piled on their heads.
The film, which opens today in two Washington area theaters and next week in two more, is a harrowing "rockumentary" built on difficult images interspersed with musical performances that are meant to give voice to the oppressed -- as music often has -- and spread their cries for freedom. It travels to places both urban and rural to reveal what it calls the world's "27 million dirtiest secrets," 27 million people held in bondage in brothels, fields, factories and homes perhaps not far from yours.
So we see Natasha Bedingfield on a black stage. On a screen behind her, a child digs in the dirt. "Incompatible," Bedingfield sings to the clear acoustics of a guitar. "It don't matter though, 'cause someone's bound to hear my cry." Drawing on the spontaneous call-and-response tradition of African religion and music, director Justin Dillon says the film is a summons to audiences in hope that they will answer by starting a modern abolitionist movement.
The film goes undercover in the brothels of Cambodia, the brick kilns of India and near the dead lakes of Ghana to reveal that in 2008, the slave trade that we hoped was halted in the 1800s with emancipation in the United States and elsewhere is alive and escalating, feeding the dark side of globalization. The State Department estimates that at least 800,000 people of all ages are sold across borders each year, many of them to make products we use, wear or eat without knowing the origin.
"There are more slaves today than ever before in human history," Dillon said in an interview. "In 2007, slave traders made more money than Google, Nike and Starbucks combined."
We keep hoping that his camera will liberate the slaves. Instead, it moves from one terrible scene to the next.
A man with a hidden camera is ushered through the streets of an Asian city, down an alley, through a curtain and into a room where four girls sit. "You can do boom-boom?" he asks the tallest girl.
"Yeah. It's okay," says the girl, who calls herself Yang. Her voice is as certain as if the man had asked for a cup of water.
We listen to child soldiers tell about being made to kill and rape and steal. We sit on the sofa with a woman in Europe who describes how her captors threatened to kill her daughter if she didn't sell her body. We glide along a man-made lake in Ghana. Tree limbs emerge from the water like the fingers of a dead man.
Actress and activist Julia Ormond appears on-screen, explaining that this is "the second largest man-made lake on the planet. When they made the lake, they flooded a certain area but they didn't clear the trees. So . . . the fishermen who go out there, their nets are constantly tangling in the tree stumps." The children are forced to dive down and free the nets. "They discovered the child slavery there," she says, "because of the number of children's bodies that were constantly washing up on the shore."
Ormond explains that some of the lake children have been rescued. The camera, with its hope that more can be rescued, moves inside a classroom, where rescued children sing.
"One of the few things that identified these kids was their inability to smile," Ormond recalled in an interview. "These children sang, 'If you are happy and you know it clap your hands.' And none of them can smile."
Other participants include former secretary of state Madeleine Albright and scholar Cornel West.
In a melodic historical lecture, West tells Dillon why music has been such a strong force of liberation. "The only property slaves had was what? Their voices in their bodies. They held hands and they raised their voices. And call and response. Call and response. Lifting every voice, because at least at that moment you have a power and a dignity," he explains. "In the dark, when you couldn't see each other, all you had was your voices being raised so somebody in the world now or further down the line would hear your voice and recognize you are human, you have a right to be treated a certain kind of way and you are worthy of attention. The worst thing for all of us as human beings to feel is insignificant. Then we experience extinction."
The film pulls back the curtain on what we didn't know -- or believed we didn't know -- about contemporary slavery.
"We have boxes where we put things," Dillon said. "We have a box on slavery that is already . . . put on a shelf because it is history for us, for many people. There really is a new box. Part of the purpose of the film is to help the public open that box."
Often, he said, people who face the horror of human trafficking move from being oblivious to the paralysis of despair. The next thing to set in is apathy.
"It is a cycle of 'I need to see it. I don't want to see it. I need to know about it. I don't want to know about it,' " Dillon said. " 'I'm indignant. I'm upset. But what am I supposed to do about it?' "
Dillon, a musician, said that was his reaction when he became aware of human trafficking while touring with a band in Russia. The women who translated for the musicians told of job offers in the United States and, thinking that their stories didn't add up, Dillon asked to see his translator's contract. They tried calling several times, he said, and when nobody picked up, he warned the translator that those job offers might be a trap.
"We were telling someone, 'Run for your life,' and she was like, 'No, I'll take my chances,' " Dillon recalled. "That's what got me."
When Dillon returned home, he contacted nonprofit agencies that combat human trafficking. "I said, 'I'm a musician. I'm not famous. I'd like to help. I'll do anything I can.' They said, 'What can you do?' I said, 'I can put on a concert, a fundraiser.' "
One concert became several concerts, and they evolved into the film project, paid for with donations. Dillon said that all of the profits will go to projects such as buying a vehicle for a rehab camp that helps child soldiers.
"Our goal is to fund and celebrate projects. We are closing the loop by allowing viewers to become participants in the solution," he said. "We don't let people out of the theaters until they can already begin responding."
Audience members may donate on the spot or request more information. Dillon said the film becomes a social contract, leaving viewers with this question about human slavery:
Now that you know, how will you respond?
2 comments:
check out the books on google that says something about Thailand incursion into cambodia and lao
http://books.google.com.au/books?id=Gdr4Sd8GMu8C&pg=PA41&lpg=PA41&dq=1904+and+1907+khmer+map&source=web&ots=YcLr1bpbMD&sig=lbAv9sqEgKyvk1NFWTaBWl1JcmY&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=10&ct=result#PPP1,M1
The Cambodian government won't much help in comabating human trafficking, yet promotes such practice in an effort to maintain the so-called the "robustness of economic growth"; in fact, that's the ruling party's philosophy of its economic prosperity.
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