A scene from Ironeaters
A local saying goes, “Have no fear of the sea, it will bring you fruits.” And this is how the people lived their modest lives in Shitolpur, an area on the coast of Chittagong in southern Bangladesh
Then one day the sea bore an unexpected gift. After a violent storm in 1960, a huge ship was found stuck deep in the sand. Initially the locals did not know what to do with the ship, but eventually they decided to take it apart and salvage the iron. This was the dawn of a new era for this region: the slaughtering of sea-giants brought an end to the tranquil life.
While the denizens of the southern region were blessed with the garbage of civilisation, populace of the north received a boon of the 'Monga'-- the annual famine that occurs in the dry season. Dire shortage of food and money force many farmers to migrate to Chittagong
Berlin-based Bangladeshi filmmaker Shaheen Dill-Riaz's documentary Ironeaters (Bangla title Lohakhor) takes a close look at the lives and working conditions of these ship-breakers. The title of the film hints at the almost superhuman endurance and drive that enables these destitute, desperate people to manually break apart colossal old ships, turning them into sheets of metal.
Press screening of the 85-minute documentary, produced by Lemme Film and Mayalok, was held yesterday at the Goethe-Institut Bangladesh. A press conference followed the screening. Dill-Riaz and Kathrin Lemme, producer of the film, attended the conference.
The feature-length documentary will have a public premier on February 15, as part of the Dhaka Short and Independent Film Festival organised by Bangladesh Short Film Forum.
Ironeaters has already been screened and generated much interest at several international film festivals and has been honoured with the Grand Prix at Le Festival International Du Film D´Enviornnement (Paris , France ) in December 2007, First Prize at the One-World-Award NRW (Köln , Germany ) in September 2007 and First Prize at the Film South Asia (Kathmandu , Nepal
The film reveals a brutal cycle of exploitation. The ship-breaking yards in our third-world country are the graves of run-down, obsolete and most-often toxic chemical carrying ships from the west. The seasonal labourers play hide-and-seek with death everyday, working in inhuman conditions. The product of their labour is used in constructions all over the country. Certain individuals get richer. But lives of the ship-breakers never change. They do not get helmets. Out in the mud, amidst sharp metal objects, they work bare feet. They are surrounded with toxic chemicals and gasses but they get no masks. There is no doctor, no stretcher. Like mules they are subjected to carry big and heavy loads. Like an army of ants, these men bring down 75,000-ton ships -- images of slaves working on pyramids come to mind.
After backbreaking labour, a cable-puller gets around Tk 80 (a little over $1) per day. Exploited by owners and contractors, these workers at times find themselves without the money to return home in North Bengal .
But like Michael Moore, Dill-Riaz does not hammer his opinion in the film. He does not hound the owners or contractors. He lets the camera roll and the apparently “righteous” and “religious” factory owners reveal their “generosity”.
Dill-Riaz and his crew filmed exclusively at the PHP yard. According to the filmmaker, “I had requested permission to shoot the film from the Bangladesh Shipbreakers Association (BSBA) and they suggested the location. PHP administration allowed us nearly four months of unrestricted shooting. It was a seven-member crew, with four or five of us on location at a time -- the camera assistant, the loader, the sound recordist and myself. We visited the workers in the north several times. It was very important to show where the workers came from.”
Regarding what inspired him to make this film, Dill-Riaz said, “The place where ships are dismantled is not far from my village home. Access to the yards was strictly forbidden for anyone who didn't work there. But we heard lots of stories about the colossal ships and the serious industrial accidents. My decision to make a documentary on ship-breakers was triggered by Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado's remarkable photos on the subject. I started researching in 2001.”
The film was shot between January and May 2005. The filmmaker and his crew lived with the workers and filmed them for a total of five months. Ironeaters was edited in Berlin by Andreas Zitzmann and post-production was done in Hamburg
Though the film shows the protagonists returning home, jaded and disconsolate, and swearing that they would never go back to the ship-breaking yards, they cannot escape the system. Kholil and Gadu again recruit desperate young men from their village. Djabor still dreams of starting his own little business in between pulling cable. Osman still works as a gas-cutter and relies on his luck to avoid fatal accidents.
As one worker puts it, “If you're really hungry, you'd be able to eat anything, even if it's iron…”
Source: The Daily Star. 08-02-2008. By Karim Waheed
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