Laborfest: Film: "Siren" from Bangladesh

FilmWorks United International Working Class Film & Video Festival
Siren (2012)(60 min)(Bangladesh) by Molla Sagar
“Siren” by Bangladeshi filmmaker Molla Sagar is a documentary on the organized destruction of the jute industry, which once was the largest employer in the country with 60,000 workers. Jute was known as the golden fiber and this powerful documentary exposes the human cost for workers and their families of the privatization of the nationalized industry with the shutdown of the state-run jute mills starting in 2000. The IMF and World Bank said they were “modernizing” the industry but the real plan to was to shutter the industry. Jute is a natural competitor to DuPont and Monsanto’s synthetic fibers and the closures eliminated this competitor.
Filmed between 2007 and 2008 at Khalishpur in Khulna, the documentary shows desperate conditions as a result of the closure led some workers to commit suicide while others were forced into prostitution.
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http://www.laborfest.net/2015/2015schedule.htm