CIFF: Waste Land
By Steven Pate in Arts & Entertainment on Oct 7, 2010 6:40PM
This is part of Chicagoist's coverage of the Chicago International Film Festival.
On the northern outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, a dump truck is tipping its payload onto a football field-sized patch of uncovered trash at the edge of the world's largest landfill, the Jardim Gramacho. Before the garbage is even out of the truck, a few dozen people scurry up the sides of the still-forming pile, plucking prized recyclables from the waste with desperate, practiced quickness, vultures circling overhead and a post-apocalyptically barren man-made desert stretching all around. These are the catadores, or pickers of recyclable materials, who perform their exhausting and dangerous work among the trash and live in the nearby favelas.
Waste Land follows artist Vik Muniz as he attempts to document this community of 3,000 or so pickers who extract 200 tons of recycling as they work day and night, extracting an honest living out of the things we all throw away. Muniz grew up poor in São Paulo, leaving for Chicago after being paid off by the rich man who shot him in the leg, eventually landing in New York and finding artistic success. The idea behind this project was to create portraits of the pickers using for material the recyclables they collect and employ the pickers themselves as studio assistants helping to create the piece. The proceeds from the sale of the work would go to benefit the pickers themselves.
The dignity and self-assurance of the pickers, who maintain a sense of pride and community, even forming a union, and Muniz's unflappable assurance in the transformative power of art, make this film is irresistibly affecting. The stories of the individual pickers living at the frontier of civilization are riviting, while the plight of their union is both eye-opening and uplifting. Through it all, Walker threads the stages of Muniz's work from conception to meeting the pickers and executing the portraits to the sale of the finished product.
Waste Land has been racking up awards at festivals around the world, and it is easy to say why. It is engrossing, inspiring, and well-executed. Anyone with an interest in social justice or environmental issues, in a triumphant portrayal of the artistic process or just in a real life feel-good story will not be disappointed.
Waste Land screens October 10, and 11.