Pink Ribbons, Inc.

Pink Ribbons, Inc. (2011)

Capitalizing on hope.

Breast cancer has become the poster child of corporate cause-related marketing campaigns. Countless women and men walk, bike, climb and shop for the cure. Each year, millions of dollars are raised in the name of breast cancer, but where does this money go and what does it actually achieve? Pink Ribbons, Inc. is a feature documentary that shows how the devastating reality of breast cancer, which marketing experts have labeled a "dream cause," becomes obfuscated by a shiny, pink story of success.

Date of release
2011-09-11
TMDB
6.6 / 10 (13)
Runtime
1h 37m
Genres
Documentary
Director
Léa Pool

Casting

Interesting facts

Pink Ribbons, Inc. is a 2011 National Film Board of Canada (NFB) documentary about the pink ribbon campaign, directed by Léa Pool and produced by Ravida Din. The film is based on the 2006 book Pink Ribbons, Inc: Breast Cancer and the Politics of Philanthropy by Samantha King, associate professor of kinesiology and health studies at Queen's University.

Development

Ravida Din, an NFB producer, is a breast cancer survivor who had read Samantha King's book as well as Barbara Ehrenreich's 2001 Harper's Magazine article "Welcome to Cancerland" after her own experience with the disease and its treatment:

“I was initially fascinated by King’s economic and historical context around philanthropy,” she said. “The question I was intrigued by was, ‘How did we get to this kind of breast cancer culture that privileges shopping [as a solution] as opposed to getting angry and asking for change?'"

After developing an outline for the project with help from scriptwriters Nancy Guerin and Patricia Kearns, Din began looking for the right director, and approached Pool with the project.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

Recommended