Get curated editors’ picks, peeks behind the scenes, film recommendations and more.
A second-generation hair trader, Zhang Ming Ye makes his living as a broker operating between factories that produce wigs and hairpieces and the collectors who travel village to village across Asia in search of people willing to sell their long hair. According to Ming Ye, the hair trade is relatively stable and lucrative due to high demand, especially in the West, and because the quality of human hair is impossible to replicate. However, competition from online traders has recently put a dent in his business. A brief dive into the complexities of the Chinese hair trade, this short documentary by the Shanghai-based US photographer and filmmaker Noah Sheldon peers into a peculiar corner of the Chinese economy to hint at its larger context. In fact, the human hair trade is a vast, largely unregulated, billion-dollar global industry which, it should be noted, has developed a reputation for exploitative practices. The film is part of Sheldon’s Work-is documentary series, which ‘sets out to catalogue the labor force of China in a more intimate and granular way, using voices and personal histories to color the notion of what it means to be working in modern China’.
video
Global history
The famed medieval map that stretched beyond Earth to heaven, history and myth
5 minutes
video
Earth science and climate
A biologist on the sorrows of documenting the Great Salt Lake’s collapse
6 minutes
video
Design and fashion
Household items are reborn in a ‘visual symphony of everyday objects’
11 minutes
video
Music
As a pianist strikes a chord, visualisations of his notes appear in real time
5 minutes
video
Human rights and justice
Meet the man who uncovered the scandal of nuclear testing in South Australia
13 minutes
video
Thinkers and theories
Jeremy Bentham was consumed by creating a perfect prison. Here’s the result
4 minutes
video
Global history
The strange journey of the Parthenon Marbles to the British Museum
10 minutes
video
Animals and humans
Laura fights to protect the magnificence of wild horses running free
6 minutes
video
Film and visual culture
The old-time cinema experience endures in a quiet corner of Japan
5 minutes