Adidas (Moda)
Italia Green Film Festival
Adidas (Moda)
Prankster activists perform an elaborate hoax to improve conditions for garment workers in the Adidas supply chain. Staging a shocking runway show at Berlin Fashion Week, they use humor and mischief to make the world pay attention to labor and environmental abuses that the massive sportswear brand is trying to hide. Clean Clothes Campaign approached The Yes Men to develop a creative action that would dress down Adidas for pandemic-era labor abuses: the sportswear brand owes millions of euros to garment workers throughout their supply chain—and that’s on top an already growing pile of dirty corporate laundry! In January, 2023, Jeff Walburn and Mike Bonanno of the Yes Men orchestrated an elaborate “utopian” media hack announcing that Adidas’ new CEO would share leadership with a former garment worker and union leader, Vay Ya Nak Phoan (Len Leng). As this announcement hit the newswires at the start of Berlin Fashion Week, the second stage of the action deployed.
Fashionistas were shocked by a full runway show that claimed to be from Adidas but was in fact was the work of Berlin-based designer-activists Threads and Tits, who spent weeks turning what could have been merely a hoax into a real fashion show. Along with a website, subvertising campaign, press releases, and show swag, the shocking catwalk show debuted styles that were “exhuastively pre-stressed by the underpaid workers who made them.” The action resulted in widespread press coverage and social media buzz. Just weeks later, Cambodian workers who had been fired for organizing were reinstated with back pay. In the months since, Clean Clothes Campaign and garment worker unions have won other victories, but Adidas still refuses to pay what they owe and to sign the Pay Your Workers agreement.
Igor Vamos
Igor Vamos (“Mike Bonanno”) is a founder of notorious comedy-activism group The Yes Men, whose satirical interventions form the basis of three award-winning feature documentaries, “The Yes Men” (2004), “The Yes Men Fix the World” (2009), and “The Yes Men Are Revolting” (2014), festival favorites in Toronto, Berlin, Sundance, SXSW and others. Their work has been shown in the Whitney Biennial, Venice Biennale, ARS Electronica, and other major exhibitions. They are the recipients of numerous awards, including Creative Time’s Leonore Annenberg Prize for Art and Social Change, Grierson Documentary Award, Berlinale Panorama Audience Award, the UN Association Film Festival Grand Jury Award, Best Documentary Award at HBO Comedy Arts Festival, and the Audience Award at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam. Most recently, Vamos was a Consulting Producer on “Borat: Subsequent Moviefilm,” and is recognized worldwide as an innovator in activism and pranks.
Keil Orion Troisi
Keil Orion Troisi (“Jeff Walburn”) has been a core member of The Yes Men since 2012, and co-wrote and produced most of their performance-interventions since 2016. He has collaborated with dozens of activist groups all over the world, using humor and mischief to advance environmental and social justice campaigns. He co-directed “Total Disaster” (2022) which had a 50+ festival run, won the David Imoh Sunday Social Justice Prize and took awards at Kursaal San Sebastien, Just Film, Better World, and Cine Eco Seia. He produced and co-wrote “Peace Pipeline,” which won Best Documentary at Dallas VideoFest, ND Human Rights, Wolf Tree, Skoden, Jim Thorpe, Hell’s Half Mile, Fresh Coast, and others. He directed the corporate-horror features “Human Resources” and “I Was a Teenage Horror Movie!” (which has been an audience favorite across the genre-festival circuit). His films combine humor, horror, and playfulness to antagonize systems of power.
