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Shipbreakers: the place where ships go to die.

Article Excerpt
ALANG, IN NORTHWEST INDIA on the Arabian Sea, is a contradictory place. A city where ships from around the world go to be destroyed. It's a land of gorgeous blue skies and filthy grey earth. It's a recycling yard and an environmental disaster. It's the saviour of many poor workers and the killer of hundreds every year. It's the burial ground of ships and the birthplace of steel. Indian men need this place in order to feed their families, while men in countries thousands of miles away need it to take their old, sometimes toxic, vessels. Alang is an extreme example of the gap between rich and poor. People are often forced to take the most dangerous jobs in the world just to survive. As Michael Moore demonstrates in his recent film Fahrenheit 9/11, the poor in the United States turn to the army. As Storyline Entertainment and the NFB show in Shipbreakers, in India they turn to shipbreaking.

Shipbreakers could have shown India's steel recycling industry from a cynical, North American perspective, but the filmmakers wanted to make a film that took a fair look at what is happening on the shores of this city in the ancient state of Gujurat. The film documents the dangers that recycling ships poses to the people who work there and to the environment around them; however, it also shows that without shipbreaking at least one million people in India would go hungry....

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