In the early 1900s, immigrant Jews from Eastern Europe collected, sorted, and sold secondhand clothing. As the Jewish peddlers made their way through North American city streets, they called out "Rags, Bones, Bottles!" Today, at the beginning of the 21st century, the used clothing industry has gone global. Billions of pounds go to developing nations each year. Used American clothes play an especially central role in Haiti where, as one peddler reveals, "It's all pepe, all the time." 

Dreamlike visuals and ethereal sounds intermix the beats of Jewish klezmer and Haitian rara music. Luke Fischbeck (Lucky Dragons) has composed the soundtrack of the film with an artful and nuanced ear, emphasizing the ruptures and looped connections among diasporic cultures. Secondhand (Pepe)'s two stories converge as American castoffs travel from the Jewish memoir reader's rag factory to the Haitian shores. As pepe makes its way to Port-au-Prince, passing through an intricate network of peddlers, seamstresses and entrepreneurs, the past recycles into the present. 

Shell & Bertozzi are a media-production collaborative based in Boston, USA and Grand Manan, Canada. In making Secondhand (Pepe), they worked closely with sound, multimedia and performance artist Luke Fischbeck. Secondhand (Pepe) draws on Vanessa Bertozzi and Hanna Rose Shell's complementary visions of experimental and documentary filmmaking, visual & oral history, and new media innovation. Shell & Bertozzi filmed Secondhand (Pepe) on location in Haiti, the United States and Canada. Based on their experience, they published a a photo-essay entitled "Textile Skin" in Transition Magazine in September 2006, reviewed by the Wilson Quarterly in January 2007.