Leah Borromeo is a British

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...

and filmmaker based in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, who is most known for documenting social issues. Borromeo has also directed the documentary ''The Cotton Film: Dirty White Gold.'', which is yet to be released.

Career

Borromeo writes a regular column on sustainability and ethics for

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

. She has also made a series of short films on arts activism for Channel 4’s ''Random Acts'' and hosted Resonance FM’s ''The Left Bank Show''. Borromeo has worked with

Peter Kennard Peter Kennard (born 17 February 1949) is a London-born and based photomontage artist and Professor of Political Art at the Royal College of Art. Seeking to reflect his involvement in the anti-Vietnam War movement, he turned from painting to photo ...

on several projects after she interviewed him for a book ''Beyond The Street''. They have also worked together on several films on Syrian Crises. In 2014, Borromeo directed the interactive film ''London Recruits'', which highlights direct actions young Londoners in the 1960s and 1970s took against the apartheid regime in South Africa. Borromeo has also written and filmed for the Index on Censorship, The British Journal of Photography, Amnesty International, Sky News and Greenpeace. Borromeo has a regular slot presenting arts and culture on Tariq Ali's show for TeleSUR English.

''The Cotton Film''

In 2013, Borromeo started working on ''The Cotton Film: Dirty White Gold'', which documents the epidemic of suicides amongst cotton farmers in

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

. The movie has two parallel narratives: one about the stories of two widows and a farmer, and then alongside that the story of a burgeoning movement, of activism within the fashion industry in the West. Borromeo started working on the movie after she went on a self-funded junket with a clothing brand to check out their supply chain for an article she was writing in 2009. While researching the article, she came across farmer suicides. She took the idea of making a film to

Dartmouth Films Dartmouth may refer to: Places * Dartmouth, Devon, England ** Dartmouth Harbour * Dartmouth, Massachusetts, United States * Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada * Dartmouth, Victoria, Australia Institutions * Dartmouth College, Ivy League university in ...

and crowdfunded the film's production and trailer. Subsequently she used the trailer to spread the film's campaign message of supply chain transparency across the whole fashion industry.

Toronto Star The ''Toronto Star'' is a Canadian English-language broadsheet daily newspaper. The newspaper is the country's largest daily newspaper by circulation. It is owned by Toronto Star Newspapers Limited, a subsidiary of Torstar Corporation and part ...

called Borromeo "ballsy" and wrote that "Borromeo, in her mission to make ethics and sustainability in the fashion industry a norm, speaks to widows and pesticide peddlers to uncover the harsh truth that has been blanketing the cotton farmers in India." and Ecouterre wrote that "

he movie He or HE may refer to: Language * He (pronoun), an English pronoun * He (kana), the romanization of the Japanese kana へ * He (letter), the fifth letter of many Semitic alphabets * He (Cyrillic), a letter of the Cyrillic script called ''He'' ...

follows the life of cotton from seed to store, tracing who it touches and how their live are effected. The film uncovers the real truth behind cotton, and the utter importance of buying sustainable fashion."

Controversies

While Borromeo was protesting in a G20 campaign, she was charged with ten others on two counts of impersonating a police officer. She was following a group called

Space Hijackers The Space Hijackers was a group based at Limehouse Town Hall in London, active between 1999 and 2014, that defined itself as "an international band of anarchitects who battle to save our streets, towns and cities from the evils of urban planne ...

, who were travelling in an armoured personnel carrier adorned with toy machine guns. Borromeo later quipped that if she was guilty of impersonating anyone, it would be a stripper and not a police officer as she was wearing a boiler suit rolled down to the waist to reveal a black bra.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Borromeo, Leah Living people Year of birth missing (living people) British journalists British columnists