Glasgow based artist Jan Nimmo, has been gathering images and testimonies to make a series of portraits of banana workers for the past three years. In spring 2002 she visited Ecuador for the first time. Although Ecuador is the world's largest exporter of bananas, the workers have the lowest pay and the worst conditions in the whole of Latin America. The country's biggest banana baron is Álvaro Noboa of the Bonita Brands company. He's the country's richest man and owns the world's fourth largest banana company but his workers are only paid $3.00 a day - a lot less than the legal minimum wage. When workers decided to organise and strike to gain the most basic of labour rights Jan found herself witnessing the violent attack on a peaceful occupation of a Bonita banana plantation.
'I watched the bodies being dragged down from our neighbourhood. They were wrapped in blankets soaked in blood. When I saw all this, I fainted. This all happened after the murder of my son.' Marcia lives in a favela in Rio de Janeiro. Her son was murdered by the police. He was one of the 1194 people who where killed in 2003 by the police of Rio de Janeiro. The victims are mainly young people- black and mulattos, from the poor areas. The police of Brasil are notorious for the extreme violence in trying to keep order for the state. The documentary, a German-Brasilian co-production of the video collectives AK KRAAK (Berlin) and aTraVer (Rio de Janeiro) gives a voice to the inhabitants of the favelas. They talk about their lives; being without possibilities; being marginalised; and above all - the police brutality.