🇮🇳 Hair India | Witness

For centuries Hindu pilgrims have donated their hair in a ritual of purification. Today this hair has become a precious commodity and an extraordinary economic resource.

Hair India follows the journey of human hair from the holy temples of Southern India to the production lines of Europe and on to high class beauty salons around the world.

Last year, filmmaker Raffaele Brunetti spoke to Al Jazeera’s Donata Hardenberg about the making of Hair India and how the film reflects the contradictions in modern Indian society.

Al Jazeera: Why did you decide to make a film about hair and its journey?

Raffaele Brunetti: It was my co-director Marco Leopardi who came up with the idea. At first I didn’t see much in it. A story about the hair of poor people from India, used by rich and superficial jetsetters from the Western world, just seemed too obvious for me.

But once Marco took me to the Great Lengths factory in Rome, the world’s leading manufacturer of the extensions used to thicken and lengthen hair, where I learned that hair was also being shipped back to India, I was intrigued and realised the story could become a vehicle for showing the contradictions in modern Indian society.

https://www.aljazeera.com/programmes/witness/2010/01/2010127121316920743.html

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