Minute 20

 Minute 20 (by Alica Lange)

Explanatory Note

At first, I was a bit at a loss as to what to do with my film minute. You see people working with textiles; with spinning wheels and weaving frames if I recognize that correctly. Textile production as manual labor.

I thought the video looked very "calm" and somehow peaceful. The people you see there, constantly making those repetitive movements, somehow had some sort of meditative effect on me. Especially the woman at the beginning of the video sitting at the spinning wheel, talking to someone smiling broadly. It all seems pleasant and peaceful.

I don't know exactly what they are producing, but I assume some kind of fabrics for clothes. And that's when I got the idea for my video. In my film minute you can see how everything was elaborately handmade and you can also see the time it took. That would be unthinkable today in our time of fast fashion.

And so, I had the idea of juxtaposing these two perspectives. Society is consuming faster and faster; we live in a throwaway society today. Everything must be produced faster; everything must be newer and everything must be more modern. Faster, faster, faster. Fast fashion. In a way quite the opposite of what you see in my film minute. With my video, I tried to show the change that happened in the production of textiles and clothes. Furthermore, I wanted to show the two sides of the medal regarding fast fashion. On the one side, there are people who produce our clothes under terrible conditions and time pressure. On the other side, there is a society in a buying frenzy that consumes without thinking about the origin of the textiles.

I wanted to show this connection and the pressure of speed that emanates from many things today - which is also reflected in fast fashion. That's why I tried to juxtapose the excerpts from the film minute, which show the laborious and slow manual work, with today's production facilities and to underline the effect of the need of "getting faster" also through the music and video editing.

What often concerns me is that even if we value good and fair production and are willing to spend more money on our clothes - our hands are often tied, because even expensive brands have their clothes produced cheaply and under the worst conditions. I wanted to force all spectators of my videos to take a step back and reconsider their own behavior when it comes to fast fashion – that we see what we wear and that we don't forget where these clothes come from. That we are really aware of it, do not forget it and are also grateful and appreciate it.