November 8, 2002
7:00 PM - Friday

78 minutes
Production: USA 2002
Directors:Kate Blewett and Brian Woods

Slavery is officially banned internationally by all countries, yet despite this there are more slaves , in the world today than ever before. In the four hundred years of the legal slave trade around 13 million people were shipped from Africa. Today there are an estimated 27 million slaves - people paid no money, locked away and controlled by violence. Multi-Award winning documentary makers Kate Blewett and Brian Woods - who produced the groundbreaking films The Dying Rooms, Innocents Lost and Eyes of a Child, saw this terrible exploitation with their own eyes. The result is an utterly devastating film.

This film explores three separate industries where slaves are still to be found: the cocoa industry in the Ivory Coast, domestic slavery in Britain and the USA, and the carpet industry in northern India. At present approximately 4,000-5,000 children are missing from Northern Bihar, India. Amongst the missing is Huro, a boy who disappeared at six years old, and hasn't been seen by his family for over five years. The cocoa industry of Cote d'Ivoire produces nearly half the world's supply (over 100 million tonnes) grown on thousands of small plantations where young men are worked up to eighteen hours a day, unpaid, and beaten if they try to escape. Kate and Brian interview slaves still working in the plantations, as well as a group of young men who had been rescued just days before. Most people imagine that slavery is only found in the developing world, a long way from Western democratic capitals. Not so as Kate and Brian found in both Washington and London. A woman called Dora in Washington and another called Reshma in London both tell stories of cruelty, long hours and no payment. Both wish, in their own courageous way, to bring to the public's attention the wrong that has been done to them in order to prevent such abuses happening in the future.

This film isn't all bad news, however. The filmmakers also look at how slavery can be fought, both here and abroad,