Texas Doc Tour: MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES
- WHEN:
- Wed. 02/14 | 7:00PM
- WHERE:
- Alamo Drafthouse Downtown, at the Ritz on 6th Street map
1 Person Likes this Event. I Like It
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Theater: Alamo Downtown
Rating: Unknown
Age Policy: 18 and up; Children 6 and up will be allowed only with a parent or guardian. No children under the age of 6 will be allowed.
See AFS WEBSITE for tickets and details.
MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES
Directed by Jennifer Baichwal, produced by Nick de Pencier, Daniel Iron, and Jennifer Baichwal, cinematography by Peter Mettler, edited by Roland Schlimme Canada, 2006, distributed by Zeitgeist Films, color, 35mm, 90 min.
Featuring a discussion of Burtynsky�s photography presented by Roy Flukinger, Research Curator, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin
Steve Gravestock (Toronto International Film Festival) writes: �The powerful and compelling MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES is ostensibly a portrait of Edward Burtynsky, the celebrated Canadian photographer who specializes in large-scale studies of industrial vistas. But as anyone who's seen Baichwal's previous work would expect, the film is far more than a straightforward portrait of an artist. Indeed, MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES is as much about the aesthetic, social and spiritual dimensions of industrialization and globalization as it is about Burtynsky and his work.
Burtynsky's interest in humanity's impact on nature led to frequent visits to China, where most of the world's raw materials - and much of its waste - wind up. The film follows Burtynsky's trips to China and a related trip to Bangladesh, where young men immerse themselves in toxic sludge to tear apart giant ships.
Baichwal and her colleagues oscillate among very different, yet not entirely contradictory perspectives. Burtynsky's photographs tend to emphasize the aesthetic dimension of overhauled landscapes, stressing the lurid and curious beauty of these metamorphoses. In Burtynsky's photos, human beings only make appearances as lone figures or in massive choreographed groups.
At the same time, the film focuses on the human cogs in the machine, contrasting Burtynsky's epic photographs with the tedium the workers endure and the sometimes toxic and alienating impact on the people these efforts are supposed to benefit. (The opening sequence exposes what Burtynsky's photographs do not: the massive size of the actual projects, and the huge number of individuals involved in making the tiniest objects.)
Beautifully shot and edited, and conceived with a startlingly exhaustive awareness of the repercussions of our mania to control and repackage our environment, MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES is a truly unsettling look at contemporary existence. It's also rather uniquely Canadian, recalling Northrop Frye's famous assessment of Canadian literature: the film records the conquest of the natural landscape by a sensibility that does not love it. Writ on a global scale, this mindset is profoundly disturbing.�
Showings (click on a show time to buy tickets):
Wednesday, February 14
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