Steklarski blues

In a dark and rather bleak industrial estate in an urban part of Slovenia a factory runs making drinking glasses for export. This film looks into the industry of glass making in the area, with people blowing glass as well as automated processes. And that's about it – the film is basically a collection of scenes around the manufacture of glass in Slovenia (although we are never told this is where it is). Only in the final five seconds does the film turn to colour on a close up of a woman's face – up until this point it is all in black & white and only looking at scenes of manufacturing.

I do not know anything about glass making nor much about Slovenia so I am totally open to the idea that I just lack the understanding to really get the point of this film, but I was left totally bewildered by what the film was trying to achieve or say to me. The film was 99% scenes of buildings and manufacturing before this sudden cut to a woman's face looking away – this implies it had some meaning but I didn't get it and would love to hear any suggestions from others who have seen this film.

It was still interesting enough though because I work in a factory and understand the sort of precautions we have to take for H&S, so to see a load of moving parts, molten glass and tools being used by people with the barest PPE (gloves) and nothing to stop them coming into contact with potentially fatal hazards was just gripping viewing to me. I can see the economic benefits of shipping manufacturing jobs out of western countries but certainly protecting the workforce is not a side effect of doing it!

Overall, as someone interested in working conditions within factories I found this just about worth seeing once. However the ending implies that there is a greater meaning in this short film but unfortunately it was totally lost on me and, in fact, was a bit irritating as a result. Those with greater insight than I may find something wonderful in this but without that understanding I only could watch a film with scenes of manufacturing, nicely shot in black and white but with nothing of substance that I could get my teeth into.