Synopsis: Brazilian artist Vik Muniz creates photographic images of people using found materials from the places where they live and work. His "Sugar Children" series portrays the images of deprived children of Caribbean plantation workers using the sugar from their surroundings. When acclaimed filmmaker Lucy Walker trains her camera on Muniz, he is cultivating a new idea for a project. He knows the material he wants to use—garbage—but who will be the subject of the new series of works? Waste Land is a wonderfully resonant documentary that chronicles Muniz's journey to Jardim Gramacho, the world’s largest landfill, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. He collaborates with an eclectic band of catadores, or self-designated pickers of recyclable materials, and photographs these inspiring characters as they recycle their lives and society’s garbage. Walker gains fantastic access to the entire process and, in doing so, offers stirring evidence of the transformative power of art and the dignity that can be found in personal determination. [Synopsis courtesy of Sundance Film Festival]
READ MORE ABOUT Waste LandFive films have been named as winners of the International Documentary Association's 2010 IDA Documentary Awards. The recipients will be honored on December 3rd at a gala held in the Director's Guild Theater.
Read More »Documentary filmmaker Lucy Walker had a phenomenal run in 2010. Two documentaries she helmed ("Waste Land" and "Countdown to Zero") hit theaters, she collected a slew of trophies and toured the world on the film festival circuit from Berlin to Sundance. This year finds Walker basking in the glow of ...
Read More »This interview was originally published when Lucy Walker's "Waste Land" played at MoMA earlier in the year, as part of their annual Premiere Brazil! Festival. The documentary opens in New York on Friday, October 29.
Read More »
0 Comments