A time honored tradition at the New Orleans Mardi Gras is tossing beads from balconies and sidewalks to encourage the female revelers to shed their blouses. This year's celebration, only 3-and-one-half years after the social, political cultural, and physical devastation of Hurricane Katrina -- and in the midst of a powerful global economic downdraft -- finds witless revelers quite happy to carry on the custom. But there are consequences, and Redmon/Sabin capture that story in Mardi Gras: Made in China, their Sundance title that was nominated for the Grand Jury award.
Redmon makes it completely clear that there is a huge gap between the unaware revelers on the streets of New Orleans and the reality of the beads tossed thoughtlessly -- they had to be made somewhere, by someone, at some cost. And this film finds that connection in China. As Karina Longworth wrote in her review: "If his camera doesnt flinch from the barely-legal bare breasts of Bourbon Street ..., Redmon is equally unsparing in pointing his camera at the barely-legal women who staff the bead factories."
This unflinching eye is why this film has been so honored in so many different festivals, from Sundance to the One World festival in Czechoslovakia.
