‘Year of Cotton’ continues with film screening on cotton industry

The University of South Carolina’s Institute for Southern Studies will continue its yearlong lecture series on the impact of cotton with documentary filmmaker Laura Kissel at 6 p.m. Tuesday in the Booker T. Washington Auditorium, 1400 Wheat St.

Kissel, an associate professor of media arts at USC, will screen and discuss her award-winning documentary “Cotton Road: A Supply Chain Journey.”

The film explores how our clothes are made – from cotton grown in South Carolina that is shipped to China to be manufactured and then shipped back as inexpensive commodities like shirts, dresses and socks. In the process, Kissel illuminates the lives of the farmers who plant and pick the cotton to the low-wage textile workers who sew on buttons and stitch seams.

Kissel worked with several USC professors in the making of “Cotton Road.” Music professor Fang Man composed the score, while language and literature professors Michael Hill and Jie Guo helped translate the Chinese to English.

The “Year of Cotton” series features monthly talks by guest speakers and university scholars representing disciplines that range from history, photography and literature to film, sociology and economics.

Kissel’s film and talk is sponsored in part by the Department of History and the History Center in the university’s College of Arts and Sciences.

All events are free and open to the public.