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The documentary ’I do for money’ was distributed by the swedish TV4 and shown on the documentary channel TV4 Fakta in Sweden and Finland during 2008-09. The film was designated ”FaktaFavorit” by TV4. The film had a screening at Lens Politica Film Festival 2009.
‘I do for money’ is nominated in the spanish film festival ’Mujer doc – International documentary festival on gender’ 2011.
Short about the documentary:
The documentary ”I do for money” portraits Ae, Nat and Noi who works in the sexindustry in Thailand. The film is interview based and delineate their life stories, thoughts, feelings and dreams. It shows their working enviroment, their customers and their views about selling sex to western men.
Åsa about the background of the project:
During a few years time I travelled around Thailand, interviewing women in the sex industry, to be able to portrait the people behind the stigmatized epithet prostitute. I met strong, powerful women with different life stories and destiny. The voices of those women needed to be heard and I wanted to make that happen.
My background reason for making this film is that I was located as a volunteer worker in Thailand after the tsunami 2004. It hit me really hard when I discovered that a lot of sex tourists stayed after the tsunami disaster to enjoy the low price of buying sex. There was a drastic reduction of price in the sex industry since all the tourists left because of the tsunami. And there was a need for money among thai people. Almost 60% of the thai GNP comes from the tourist industry, service and ”miscellaneous” (Thai immigration bureau). And all of a sudden there were no tourists. Except for some…
It’s difficult to get the right statistics about the sex industry since it’s illegal. The figures vary between a few hundred thousend up to three milion sexworkers. The estimate figure of sextourists is over four milion a year (Thai immigration bureau).
I came to realize that sexshows and sextrading is a tourist attraction. You can buy T-shirts, watches and sexual services, all to a ”special price” offer. It’s all business. Milions of western men comes to Thailand every year to buy sex. What’s the view of the women who greets those men? What’s their view on their job, their life situation, themselfs? I wanted to make their voices heard and most of all, I wanted them to tell their story themselfs.
Voices of the media about the documentary ’I do for money’