Manufactured Landscapes
There are some who think saving the world and ourselves can only happen by cutting back. The infinite manufacturing of useless goods destroys our natural resources and turns us into frantic pursuers of what will disappear as soon as it is captured.
Zeitgeist Films presents, “Manufactured Landscapes,”
a striking new documentary on the world and work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky. Internationally acclaimed for his large-scale photographs of “manufactured landscapes”—quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines and dams—Burtynsky creates stunningly beautiful art from civilization’s materials and debris. The film follows him through China, as he shoots the evidence and effects of that country’s massive industrial revolution. With breathtaking sequences, such as the opening tracking shot through an almost endless factory, the filmmakers also extend the narratives of Burtynsky’s photographs, allowing us to meditate on our impact on the planet and witness both the epicenters of industrial endeavor and the dumping grounds of its waste.
In the spirit of such environmentally enlightening sleeper-hits as AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH and RIVERS AND TIDES, MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES powerfully shifts our consciousness about the world and the way we live in it, without simplistic judgments or reductive resolutions.
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August 25th, 2008 @ 7:55 am
For once it’s not hyperbole: this film will change the way you see the world (literally). Ever since we saw it a year ago, my wife and I have seen Burtynsky’s images everywhere. Waste is all around us, no matter how beautiful our environs.
August 25th, 2008 @ 8:17 am
Danilo Dolci, Sicily’s Gandhi, wrote a book called “Waste” decades ago, and that human capacity is the greatest waste. I think I’ll re-read the book and bring the film into the circle.
August 25th, 2008 @ 10:05 am
In 1989 Doug Dowd, in a book presciently titled “The Waste of Nations” (a play on Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations”), anticipated the fix we’re in now. Analyzed the major forms of waste in the modern capitalist economy (military, environmental, financial, underutilization of labor…) and proposed new directions we might take. They’re still new.
My favorite sentence from the book: “War is production in reverse.”
Doug taught here in the Bay Area and was always ready to help when you had a question the academic economic types couldn’t or wouldn’t address. Colleagues like Dan Ellsberg and Howard Zinn acknowledged his importance for their work. His economics has always been animated by a moral vision. Take a look at the impressive list of his books.