Cotton Road

Vestindo Histórias(pt)

Showdown in Seattle: Five Days That Shook the WTO(en)

1999 documentary film, first broadcast in daily half-hour installments, about the November 1999 protests against the Ministerial Conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Seattle, Washington.

The Next Black(en)

An exploration of the future of clothing, profiling forward-thinking companies at the forefront of redefining how and what we wear.

Gigant des Nordens(de)

The Twenty Dollar Miracle(en)

The American woman is the best dressed woman in the world. This is due to Yankee ingeniuty, which makes a fashionable, well-made dress to sell for twenty dollars or less.

Traceable(en)

Traceable follows Laura Siegel, a fashion designer who takes a critical look at the fashion supply chain and fast fashion industry, travels through India in order to meet and work together with the artisans who create the majority of the clothing that we wear. The film explores our growing disconnect of how and who makes our clothing, thus instilling a need for traceability in the fashion industry.

Packed Lunch(en)

What is it about Speedos? Well here Australian director Tim Hunter is on a mission to find the answer to the question of why so many gay men can't seem to get enough of hunks in tight fitting trunks? Although somehow I think the answer can be found in the question! Anyway in a bid to discover the truth, Hunter has carried out a series of interviews with men who have more than a passing interest in this briefest of garment, including that of Speedo designer Peter Travis, who here relates his part in the history of 'the male equivalent of the Wonder Bra.'

Logistics(xx)

Logistics or Logistics Art Project is an experimental art film. At 51,420 minutes (857 hours or 35 days and 17 hours), it is the longest movie ever made. A 37 day-long road movie in the true sense of the meaning. The work is about Time and Consumption. It brings to the fore what is often forgotten in our digital, ostensibly fast-paced world: the slow, physical freight transportation that underpins our economic reality.

Jeans: A Faded Blue Planet(fr)

A legendary garment, mass-produced, which witnessed the Industrial Revolution and clad cowboys on the western frontier, is now a fashion statement worldwide for men and women, young and old: an icon of modernity which has lasted for 150 years. With flying colors, the jeans have sailed through early marketing, the Internet, the world of collectors, the end of the Cold War, and now globalization. Their eternal popularity begs a question: Why?

Le Paris des mannequins(fr)

A photoshoot on the roofs and in the streets of Paris, under the astonished eyes of the inhabitants.

Civilisations: The Gardens of Babel(en)

Mesopotamia was the site of the Sumerian civilisation, which flourished at the confluence of the rivers Tigris and Euphrates. From 5000 to 2000 BC, the Sumerians flourished in a hostile environment by developing agriculture and irrigation and they opened up the trade routes of the ancient world. It was the Sumerians who invented writing and the wheel, and they first divided time into minutes and seconds. In the end however the Babylonian civilisation took the place of the Sumerians. However their heritage and myths live on in the Mediterranean and Western worlds to this day.

Dans le vent(fr)

Short subject on how fashion is created-- not by the great couturiers, but on the street.

Counterfeit Culture(en)

Documentary - COUNTERFEIT CULTURE is a one-hour documentary that explores the dangerous and sometimes deadly world of fake products. An industry that once dealt in imitation designer handbags and shoes has exploded into a global epidemic of counterfeit pharmaceuticals, foods, toys, electronic goods, car parts and microchips. COUNTERFEIT CULTURE challenges consumers to take a deeper look at what appears to be harmless knock-offs at bargain prices. - Ann-Marie MacDonald, Tim Phillips, Todd Gilmore

Tales from the Royal Wardrobe(en)

Today, few people's clothes attract as much attention as the royal family, but this is not a modern-day paparazzi-inspired obsession. Historian Dr. Lucy Worsley, Chief Curator at Historic Royal Palaces, reveals that it has always been this way. Exploring the royal wardrobes of our kings and queens over the last four hundred years, Lucy shows this isn't just a public fascination, but an important and powerful message from the monarchs. From Elizabeth I to the present Queen Elizabeth II, Lucy explains how the royal wardrobe's significance goes far beyond the cut and color of the clothing. Royal fashion is, and has always been, regarded as a very personal statement to reflect their power over the reign. Most kings and queens have carefully choreographed every aspect of their wardrobe; for those who have not, there have sometimes been calamitous consequences. As much today as in the past, royal fashion is as much about politics as it is about elegant attire.

Detropia(en)

Detroit’s story has encapsulated the iconic narrative of America over the last century – the Great Migration of African Americans escaping Jim Crow; the rise of manufacturing and the middle class; the love affair with automobiles; the flowering of the American dream; and now… the collapse of the economy and the fading American mythos.

The Trader(ka)

A traveling trader provides a window into rural life in the Republic of Georgia, where potatoes are currency and ambition is crushed by poverty.

Fresh Dressed(en)

The history of Hip-Hop / Urban fashion and its rise from southern cotton plantations to the gangs of 1970s in the South Bronx, to corporate America, and everywhere in-between. Supported by rich archival materials and in-depth interviews with individuals crucial to the evolution of a way of life--and the outsiders who studied and admired them – Fresh Dressed goes to the core of where style was born on the black and brown side of town.

Death By China(en)

In 2001, China joined the World Trade Organization with the strong support of a Democratic President and Republican Congress. Before the ink was dry on this free trade agreement, China began flooding U.S. markets with illegally subsidized exports while the big multinational companies that had lobbied heavily for the agreement rapidly accelerated the off shoring of American jobs to China. Today, as a result of the biggest shell game in American history, China has stolen millions of our jobs, corporate profits are soaring, and we now owe over $3 trillion to the world's largest totalitarian nation. This film is about how that happened... and why the best jobs program for America is trade reform with China.

The Old South(en)

This short film chronicles the importance of cotton to the economy and culture of America's Old South.

Round the Wirral with a Movie Camera(xx)

Birkenhead's sights, shopping opportunities and industries.