Kate Blewett

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Kate Blewett is a documentary film-maker in the United Kingdom. She is best known for her documentaries on human rights abuses, such as The Dying Rooms.

[edit] Life

Kate Blewett grew up in Hong Kong, Malaysia and Thailand and enjoyed a prosperous family life. Her father was a US army General and a doctor. As a child she wanted to know why people had the lives they did and why they suffered. As a teenager she wanted to make documentaries. She has a first class degree from The University of Kent in Radio, Film and Television with Educational Broadcasting.

Kate later returned to Hong Kong and specialized in Asian matters. She met her husband in Hong Kong and had her first child there. She returned to the UK after the Chinese takeover in 1997, but was soon working on The Dying Rooms.

[edit] Work

Kate's first major job in filming was tourist promotion in remote areas of Indonesia. She has filmed in Australia, China, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Macau, Malaysia, Micronesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Taiwan. She has filmed a wide variety of subjects: art and education, businesses, crimes, cultures, corruption and death, the people, the politics, the religions, the stock exchanges, flotations, violence and wildlife.

She worked for two years developing The Dying Rooms, a documentary about orphanages in communist China. The documentary was made with Brian Woods and Peter Woolrich. All three pretended to work in the orphanages.

Kate found evidence that very young children were deliberately neglected and allowed to die in agonizing ways. She became so distressed that she wanted to leave China, but she nevertheless continued the investigation. When the documentary was completed, she found the suffering extremely difficult to handle.

The Dying Rooms was televised in 26 nations and prompted an enormous outcry. She is trustee of Care of China's Orphaned and Abandoned, a charitable organization which was established after the documentary was screened.

Kate Blewett has also worked with Brian Woods to expose forced labour in cocoa production.

See Chocolate and slavery.