SPIRITS I’VE CALLED – THE JOURNEY OF STEEL
The steel industry has a huge impact on people and the environment worldwide. Iron ore mines and steelworks pollute land and air, while some former industrial areas are being transformed into landscape parks.
Carajas in Brazil, Duisburg in Germany and Taranto in Italy – three places that couldn’t be more different yet have one thing in common: the steel industry. Each location represents a different phase in the struggle against what are in many cases all-powerful steel companies. In Brazil, our protagonists’ fight is still in its infancy as they vie with a gigantic adversary. Expropriation, deforestation and pollution are just some of the problems faced by farmers in Carajas. And while the steelworks in Germany’s Ruhr region have long since shut down and made way for landscape parks, in Taranto protests against the local steel mill – Europe’s biggest – have been raging for twenty years and yet local residents still suffer from a high mortality rate caused by dioxin emissions. We closely observe the daily lives of our three protagonists under the pervasive influence of the steel industry. Egbert, who works for the Landschaftspark Duisburg; Grazia, a pediatrician in Taranto; and Pixinga, a farmer in Brazil, all devote themselves to their own struggle against the flagrant exploitation of human and natural resources.