Cotton Road
Season 1 Episode 103 72m
The film Cotton Road follows cotton from South Carolina farms to Chinese factories to illuminate the work and industrial processes in a global supply chain.
Americans consume nearly 20 billion new items of clothing each year. Yet few of us know how our clothes are made, much less who produces them. What does a rural town in South Carolina have to do with China? USC Professor and film director Laura Kissel traces the global flow of cotton, from fields in South Carolina, to ports in Savannah and Shanghai, and to textile factories in China. Evocatively capturing people and places, Cotton Road moves the viewer from farm laborers in the southeastern U.S. to millions of Chinese migrant workers driving that country’s manufacturing economy to ask: Are we connected to one another through the things we consume?
