Watch press video about Mardi Gras: Made in China from the BBC and The Sundance Channel.

David Redmon's punchy documentary critique of globalization, "Mardi Gras: Made in China," looks at the conditions in a factory in the Chinese city of Fuzhou where young workers, mostly women, are paid $1.20 a day to work 14-to-20-hour shifts in enforced silence making the beads showered onto revelers in New Orleans in exchange for baring their breasts at Mardi Gras.

The Chinese factory owner, who sees himself as a good guy and model manager, boasts of the punishments he exacts in wages from the workers toiling in sweatshop conditions when they don't meet their quotas. In a nifty turnabout, the filmmaker asks the revelers if they know where the beads come from. They don't, of course, and even when told, few seem to care. When he also shows the Chinese workers pictures of how the beads are used, they giggle in embarrassment. -Stephen Holden, The New York Times

Redmon's sly, engrossing documentary is an expert riposte to smug proponents of globalization. Thomas Friedman and your fellow flat-earthers! Watch this movie!
-Jessica Winter, The Village Voice

Click here for The Associated Press

TV GUIDE REVIEW OF MARDI GRAS: MADE IN CHINA by Maitland McDonagh

Money makes the world go 'round

The DIY look of David Redmon's slyly devastating documentary is deceptive; his examination of the human cost of globalization acknowledges hard economic facts while undermining preconceived notions about exploited workers, venal businessmen and naively oblivious American consumers, finding a slim ray of hope in the possibility of international conscious-raising, one person at a time. His subject: The unnatural history of shiny, brightly colored Mardi Gras beads, which bridge the lives of Chinese factory workers and American consumers. Redmon shies away from one-sided polemic: Even Roger Wong, whose Tai Kuen factory in the Fuzhou province manufactures beads and other novelties (including a teddy bear that squawks "Hail to the dictator!"), isn't as one-dimensional a villain as he at first appears. To be sure, his factory compound looks like a cross between a Dickensian boarding school and a prison work program, and it's hard to empathize with someone who mouths platitudes about treating workers fairly then blithely enumerates the onerous financial penalties for such infractions as talking on the line, fraternizing with opposite-sex workers and failing to meet production quotas. He also observes that his workforce is 95 percent female because "the lady workers" are easier to control. But he knows his success is as fragile as his relationship with American importer Dom Carlone, the owner of Accent Annex and Mardi Gras Madness, and that when Deng Xiaoping swept away Chairman Mao's brutal Cultural Revolution in favor of a free-market economy, he also swept away traditional ideas about loyalty and honor among business associates. And Wong isn't the only one seduced by the gospel of global economy: Redmon tags along on teenage worker Qui Bia's annual visit to her poor rural family, and her dad is a true believer as well. And for every New Orleans party animal who neither knows nor cares where the beads come from, there's another who has a pretty fair idea but doesn't want to ruin his or her fun by thinking about teenagers with burned hands and dye-discolored skin. The ironies are easy, but that doesn't invalidate them. American girls feel sorry for Chinese workers who sweat for pennies, who in turn laugh with embarrassment at the foolishness of Americans stripping for beads. It's hard to say which sight is more depressing: That of Chinese girls mortgaging their futures in the hopes of helping their families, or drunken American girls, surrounded by privilege and opportunity most of the world can barely imagine, arguing that it's fun to degrade themselves for cheap baubles. (In English and subtitle Mandarin)   — Maitland McDonagh

COMING SOON.NET REVIEW OF MARDI GRAS: MADE IN CHINA by Edward Douglas

Continuing what Michael Moore started in The Big One, director David Redmon take an in-depth look into globalization at work by following the path of the beads thrown at flashers at Mardi Gras in New Orleans. The coverage Redmon gets is really impressive, interviewing everyone involved from the workers to their supervisor, the American distributor and even various Mardi Gras revelers, giving the fullest picture of the path these beads take after being hand-assembled by underpaid workers. It’s pretty deep to watch the laissez faire attitude and reaction by partying Americans to what goes into making the beads, while the workers, who tend to live at the factory and get punished if they talk while working, seem to be amused by the frivolous use of their hard labor. The film is an interesting counterpoint to all of the “Girls Gone Wild” type videos of women exposing themselves for these beads, which are often considered disposable. More then anything, I was floored that this documentary, one of the best I’ve seen this year, wasn’t picked up by THINKFilm or Magnolia or another indie for distribution, since it seems like it could have found an audience. Regardless, it opens in New York at the Cinema Village on Friday for one week, and it’ll play other cities in the next few months.

VILLAGE VOICE REVIEW OF MARDI GRAS: MADE IN CHINA by Jessica Winter

Mardi Gras: Made in China records the Girls Gone Wild spectacle of the Bourbon Street celebrations, where gaudy plastic necklaces get flung around in a drunken quid pro quo of boobs for beads. (All together now: "Show us your tits!") Director David Redmon also visits the girls and women who produce the necklaces in the prison-like Tai Kuen factory compound in Fuzhou. They start as early as age 14 and work 12 to 20 hours per day for 10 cents an hour, their hands blistered and bloodied and their dreadful pay routinely slashed when they don't meet their impossible quotas.

Redmon shows his trump card when he screens footage of the New Orleans festivities to the Chinese workers and vice versa; the laborers are mostly amused that anyone would covet such ugly baubles, but back at Mardi Gras central, the images from Tai Kuen push the needle off the record and turn the house lights on the party. "It's not fun," understates a suddenly sober reveler. Also featuring the sanguine realpolitik of the rich, tyrannical Chinese factory boss (whose favorite word seems to be "punishment") and his richer American outsourcer, this sly, engrossing doc is an expert riposte to smug proponents of the fetterless free market.

NEW YORK TIMES REVIEW OF MARDI GRAS: MADE IN CHINA by Laura Kern

 'Mardi Gras: Made in China' Traces the Origins of a Festival's Beads

In his documentary "Mardi Gras: Made in China," David Redmon asks random drunken Mardi Gras celebrators in a pre-Katrina New Orleans if they're familiar with the origins of those strings of brightly colored beads so fundamental to the festivities. After receiving some truly maddening responses (such as, "Don't know, don't care — they're beads for boobs, man"), he takes us inside a factory in Fuzhou, China, to uncover the hard labor, sweat and tears that actually go into the manufacturing.
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The grim reality he finds is that groups of teenage girls, and a handful of boys, live like prisoners in a fenced-in compound, often working 16-hour days while constantly exposed to styrene, a chemical known to cause cancer — all for about 10 cents an hour. Roger, the Chinese factory owner (or slave driver), is cruel and incredibly delusional; he seems actually to believe that he provides a suitable, even enjoyable workplace for his employees, though they certainly have opposing stories to tell.

A startling look at both the effects of globalization and at a dramatic cultural divide, the film contrasts the lives of the Chinese, hard workers who are forced to make serious sacrifices at very young ages, with indulgent Americans intent on having a good time and seemingly at ease with their lack of awareness. With any luck, this film will manage to open a few closed eyes (or minds).

TIME OUT REVIEW OF MARDI GRAS: MADE IN CHINA by Ben Kenigsberg

A documentary that stirs the conscience, Mardi Gras: Made in China opens with a disclaimer: “All of the material in this film was shot before Hurricane Katrina.” But New Orleans is really incidental to the movie’s ultimate message—namely, to think long and hard about who’s making the knickknacks in your home. Examining the life cycle of the bead necklaces used at Mardi Gras, David Redmon contrasts the drunken partiers with employees of the Tai Kuen bead factory in China, who ordinarily work 14-hour days, six days a week, coping with toxic chemicals and medieval codes of conduct. The owners make millions, the buyers pay peanuts and the workers get 10 cents an hour—minus pay docked when they talk.

Redmon gets damning sound bites on both sides of the spectrum, from the clueless  management (“We don’t want to break the law,” says factory owner Roger Wong, explaining the necessity of adding a “made in China” label to the merchandise) to the people of New Orleans, who can’t be bothered to hear about how their trinkets are made. Diagnosing a case of mutual ignorance, Redmon shows footage of the factory to the shamed revelers, then brings photos of Mardi Gras to the workers, who are baffled by what’s actually done with their beads. Meanwhile, on opposite ends of the globe, moneymakers cop to the same disturbing truth: If they didn’t profit from it, someone else would. (Opens Fri; Cinema Village .)—Ben Kenigsberg

THE NATION REVIEW OF MARDI GRAS: MADE IN CHINA by Stuart Klawans

Mardi Gras: Made in China was screened in the 2005 Human Rights Watch International Film Festival, before Hurricane Katrina had wiped out half of filmmaker David Redmon's subject. The other half--a wretched factory in China, where Mardi Gras beads are made--is presumably standing and deserves your attention. This is one of the best films I know about real (as opposed to op-ed) globalization. Please welcome it to the theaters.

TEACHING SOCIOLOGY REVIEW OF MARDI GRAS: MADE IN CHINA

The documentary Mardi Gras: Made in China looks behind the scenes of the global “bead trade” –the brightly-colored plastic beads that are thrown from floats and balconies to celebrants in the French Quarter of New Orleans.  The director/producer, David Redmon, juxtaposes interviews and images of the young women working in a Chinese bead factory, located in a rural region of Fuzhou, with young American women and men celebrating in the streets of New Orleans during the annual Mardi Gras carnival.  Redmon also interviews the wealthy Chinese owner of the bead factory; the owner’s American counterpart, who distributes the beads; and a long-time local resident of New Orleans, Ms. Pearl.  There are no voiceover comments on the conditions or behaviors in either location; rather Redmon allows the individuals on both ends of this global market to speak for themselves.
 
Mardi Gras: Made in China has several potential sociological uses in either an undergraduate or graduate-level classroom.  From one perspective, the film is a commentary on global trade.  Cheap, plastic beads are produced in China by women who make $62 a month.  The beads are then sent halfway across the globe to become a trinket tossed by the handfuls to New Orleans partygoers.  The documentary recounts a single case of how the consumer capitalism enjoyed in wealthy nations like the United States is built upon the labor of poorly paid workers in a less developed country.  The operating principle of global capitalism is to obtain the lower costs for production.  Thus, the beads, once produced in Czechoslovakia, are now manufactured in China.  The future of Chinese bead manufacturing is uncertain; the factory owner describes growing competition in the bead market from other less developed countries, like Vietnam, that do not have the same level of safety regulations.  In a moment of apparent cognitive dissonance, this self-described capitalist owner justifies the dynamics of free market competition while simultaneously portraying his relationship with American distributor as one of traditionally-based “loyalty.”
 
The film can also be used to analyze gender relations in two very different cultural contexts.  The majority of the bead factory workers are poor, young women, some of whom left school as young as age 15 to start working in a factory that has made the male owner very wealthy.  One young woman describes her own life goal as working for the future success of her younger brother.  When she visits home, a tenement-like apartment, she presents her adolescent brother with a cheap plastic watch despite his protests of not knowing how to tell time.
 
Life in the factory compound is strict, and the factory owner describes his own role as instilling proper (gender) values.  Male and female workers are housed separately and any interaction between a male and female inside the compound can result in lost wages.  The young Chinese women seem childlike as they dance to popular music during their time off, display their stuffed animals, and walk arm-in-arm around the factory compound.  By sharp contrast, the young women on the streets of New Orleans appear jaded as they move freely around the streets of the city at night, where they unreflectively/playfully expose their breasts or other body parts to the gawking young men in exchange for cheap plastic beads.  In between these two extremes is Ms. Pearl, a woman in her late 50s, who dresses in a clown like costume for the carnival in hopes of getting beads and other small trinkets, which she plans to give to her grandchildren.
 
In a brilliant directing strategy, Redmon lets the individuals at each end of the global market see each other.  Redmon show pictures of the New Orleans celebrants to the Chinese factory workers, who exhibit embarrassment looking at the exposed body parts of the young American women.  The photos are eagerly passed around the shop floor.  One Chinese woman wonders why anyone would expose her body for these “ugly” beads.  Back in New Orleans, many of the individuals demonstrate ignorance or a lack of caring when asked where they thought the beads came from.  When asked to view images of the Chinese factory workers, some young Americans were reluctant to even view pictures; several expressed concerns that the Chinese workers might be toiling in sweatshop conditions and they didn’t want to ruin their party mood with such knowledge.  Once the Americans viewed the digital images, they described a feeling of shame in continuing to wear the beads.
 
Finally, one of the most important ways Mardi Gras: Made in China can be used in sociology classroom is to illustrate how artifacts/products are embedded with social and cultural meaning; rather the context shapes the way an individual perceives the beads.  The factory owner beams with pride because he has heard that Americans call out for his beads in the streets of New Orleans and that people treasure them.  For the factory workers,  the beads are a cheap product that Americans wear while the factory itself provides a wage for millions of unskilled Chinese laborers.  The American distributor, who goes bankrupt by the end of the film, identifies the beads as one of the many products in a vast global marketplace.  And for the young women and men in New Orleans, the beads are a token of representing either an act of sexual liberation or moment of public voyeurism, largely depending upon your gender perspective.  Finally, Redmon seems to be commenting on the disposability of many consumer good: At the end of the documentary he includes a street scene filmed the morning after carnival has ended.  A mechanical street sweeper vacuums up thousands of discarded beads left lying throughout the French Quarter.
 
Mardi Gras: Made in China was released before the summer of 2005.  In our post-Katrina environment, this documentary could open up a classroom discussion about the dynamics of class and race in the city of New Orleans or about social structure factors, such as the collapse of the tourist trade, which will make infrastructure rebuilding a challenge.  In this new social environment, the beads have taken on yet another cultural meaning.  Volunteer organizations like the Red Cross are giving beads to the disaster relief workers to show support for and solidarity with the people of New Orleans.
 
The pivotal learning – and – teaching moment comes towards the end of the film when individuals at each end of the global market see the other.  For the sociology teacher, this moment can be used to facilitate a classroom discussion about globalizations, gender, and/or social and cultural meanings.  Moving from questions such as “Whom made those beads?”  to more personal questions about who made the students’ Nike shoes, Abercrombie and Fitch sweatshirts, or Prada handbags can increase a students; level of critical analysis about significant social changes.  Without the traditional voiceover found in many educational documentaries, Redmon leaves the film open to the potential interpretations that can be based on the various perspectives recounted in his documentary.  While this means a teacher or a student may be required to gather her or his own background information about specific points raised, Mardi Gras: Made in China’s documentary style also allows the film to be used in multiple ways depending upon the teacher and the focus of the course.
 
Susan M. Alexander
Saint Mary’s College

A revealing and sobering look at globalization. -Ann Hornaday, Washington Post

Mardi Gras: Made in China is a straightforward documentary that tackles corporate globalization by following the life cycle of a string of Mardi Gras beads from the Tai Kuen Bead Factory in Fujian, China, where they are made, to the streets of New Orleans, where they adorn someone’s neck before ending up in the gutter. -Sonny Devereaux, The Epoch Times

If you ever wondered where all those beads in New Orleans come from, “Mardi Gras: Made in China” provides the answer. Director David Redmon shows us the Chinese factory where young women make hundreds of pounds of beads for about $12.80 a week, along with the kids who are trading “beads for boobies” stateside. Redmon captures the reactions of Mardi Gras revelers he stops to show images of the bead-makers. While some are indifferent and just want to see “Girls Gone Wild” behavior, others are genuinely upset about the Chinese work conditions. The women in China are just as surprised to discover that all of their hard work goes toward behavior they find socially embarrassing and unacceptable—and that most of those beads quickly wind up in the trash. -Seth J. Bookey, Gay City News

"I'll cast my ballot for most promising picture to Mardi Gras: Made in China, a cross-cultural assessment of the consequences of globalization through aspecific case study. The investigation takes viewers to a small factory in Fuzhou, China, where the infamous Mardi Gras strings of beads are manufactured.In the process of digging up heaps of lies, unethical behaviour, ignorant bystanders and disconcerting truths about the process leading up to the beads'final destination, director David Redmon focuses his analysis on the marked cultural clash between West and East, rich and poor, careless and hope-deprived."  -Michael-Oliver Harding, Concordia Independent Newspaper

"Mardi Gras: Made in China emerged as by far the Sundance festival’s most interesting and revealing look at China … A film like Redmon’s Mardi Graspractices politics. Watching it, in fact, is a political act. Observing how colourful beads are made under gruelling factory conditions in Fuzhou, China, Redmon then juxtaposes this footage with images of the beads' final destination—at the New Orleans Mardi Gras, where the beads are flung at women who expose their breasts." -Robert Koehler, Cinema Scope

"Redmon's sharpest move is taking footage of his visit to China to Bourbon Street to show the revelers where their ill-gotten beads came from. The contrast here isunmistakable: From teenage girls who work 20 hours a day, we go to privileged American youth who have so much spare time they can afford to spend a week in New Orleans being drunk and naked." -Eric D. Snider, EFilmCritic.com

"Mardi Gras: Made in China is about the low-paid Chinese factory workers stringing Mardi Gras beads that 'girls flash their breasts for in New Orleans, 'You get a sense of the global economy, and you get a sense of the inequities of it all." -Geoffrey Gilmore, Director of Sundance Film Festival

"Redmon deftly exposes the lurking hypocrite in all of us. It's with a creeping sense of shame you realize that although we would never work in a place like that–we don’t have to–we expect others to do so simply because they're in the developing world and we’re not. The bead workers are paid ten cents an hour and work 18 hours a day." -Dana McNairn, See Magazine, Edmonton, Canada

"Mardi Gras: Made in China is about the true cost of those trinkets. David Redmon's … documentary is a real buzzkill for those who don't like to think about the people who make cheap baubles sold at your local Wal-Mart." -Roger Moore, Orlando Sentinel,  4 of 5 stars

"Can there be a downer side to Mardi Gras other than the inevitable killer hangover the day after? Yes, there can and David Redmon shows us the way. It's all about the beads. His documentary, Mardi Gras: Made in China, reveals the very people behind the creation of these ugly strings of garbage partiers fling all over Bourbon Street in the hopes of seeing some skin. They're factory workers in China and they work long, oppressive hours under strict conditions for paythat's next to nothing. This film isn’t some blind, naïve crusade. David just wants to introduce the two sides to one another in the hopes that thought willeventually lead to action, so that maybe one day life can be better for those who toil endlessly for a measly buck and he does so with a little humor and without that preachy tone many other filmmakers would take."  -Eric Campos, Film Threat

"Redmon doesn't explain how he got inside this remote factory in China for such candid conversations, nor does he even try to explain the complicated pluses and minuses of the free-trade economy that has nurtured this arrangement. He simply makes an introduction – a sickening one." -Lindy T. Shepherd, Orlando Weekly

"Sociologist and filmmaker David Redmon painstakingly documents this economic connection, showing snippets of the drunken saturnalia of Mardi Gras and then cutting to the commune-like conditions of a Chinese factory where teenage workers are paid what amounts to a couple of dollars a day for their toil … [H]e clearly has his heart in the right place and, hopefully, this good-spirited film will be seen by those who might rectify the deplorable situation." -Duane Byrge, The Hollywood Reporter

"[S]tark contrast between rowdy Mardi Gras street scenes in Big Easy and grueling working conditions in Fuzhou, China. "Mardi Gras: Made in China" seems designed overall to spark informed debate about exploitative aspects of globalization." -Joe Leydon, Variety

"David Redmon's Mardi Gras: Made in China represents the best of what a US independent documentary can be – adventurous, original, informative, witty, opinionated... Clearly a labour of love, Mardi Gras: Made in China is a smart document on the inequalities of globalisation, and the growing gap between Western consumer culture and the lives of the have-not in the rest of the world. " -Berenice Reynaud, Senses of Cinema

"The film highlights a jagged contrast between the Chinese factory workers and the partiers at Mardi Gras. The products of their bone-wearying labour are bought 12 strands for a dollar or caught from one of the passing floats, then bartered for flashes of tit-flesh or deep kisses from inebriated women."-Christopher Thrall, VU Weekly, Edmonton, Canada