Unravel Trailer
- Director/Producer: Meghna Gupta at meghna@soulrebelfilms.com. Producer: Gigi Berardi. E.P.: Lucy Norris & Tony Clark. D.P.: Susanne Willett. Editor: Prano Bailey Bond. Length: 14Mins. Year: 2012. Selected for: Contro-Sguardi: International Anthropological Film Festival. (Italy, 2012)
‘Unravel follows the Western worlds least wanted clothes, on a journey across Northern India, from sea to industrial interior. They get sent to Panipat, a sleepy town and the only place in the world that wants them, recycling them back into yarn.
Reshma is a bright, inquisitive woman working in a textile recycling factory in small time India, who dreams of travelling the vast distances the clothes she handles have. While Reshma shows us how these garments get transformed, she and other women workers reflect on these clothes. Despite limited exposure to western culture, they construct a picture of how the West is, using both their imagination and the rumours that travel with the cast-offs.’
Everything Must Go follows the journeys of worn clothing as it is sold for reuse and recycling across the world. This exhibition brings invisible global waste economies into public view, explores the people involved and the impact these businesses have upon their lives, and questions our ability to control, contain and curtail waste.
Everything Must Go contextualises anthropological research on textile recycling in India and the UK with collaborative projects including Meghna Gupta’s film Unravel and photographs by Tim Mitchell, hosts recycling workshops with Lizzie Harrison of Remade in Leeds and showcases a resurfaced textile created by Kate Goldsworthy.
It marks the culmination of the Waste of The World research project, funded by the ESRC. This investigated global flows of waste, including local waste management, food waste, the second-hand clothing trade, steel and nuclear industries and ship-breaking.
