ACF - Asian Cinema Fund

2019 Asian Network of Documentary (AND) Fund

LIST The Golden Thread

Synopsis

The Golden Thread is an immersion into the sense-scape of industrial textile labour at this uncertain moment in history when the existence of industrial worker itself is increasingly threatened. Animated by the philosophy of Multiple Pluralism ? the film contemplates itself as a product of an encounter between jute workers, early industrial machines, jute fibre, film technology, and the film crew. Where a purely observational film might construct a symphony of work in the jute mill that reduces workers to extensions of machines, The Golden Thread seeks to understand the experience of work and the aspirations for the future on the part of the workers themselves.

Director's Note

The jute industry has been dying since the appearance of polythene in the 1970s. In the last decade alone, 40 jute mills closed down. The moribund the jute industry finds itself in is the direct result of the government’s neoliberal economic policies and the death of the working class movement. The key exploration in the film is alienation of the work force. Not only is the jute labour force alienated from the product, the work itself but also themselves. Workers find it easier to talk about low wages but lack words to express the complete assault on their senses and loss of hope. Workers don′t die due to industrial accidents but they suffer a slow death as they see their dreams remain aspirational.

Festivals

2022 International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam

Still Cut

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