Waste Land follows artist Vik Muniz into Rio de Janeiro’s Jardim Gramacho, the largest landfill in the world, where catadores (literally, “tasters”) survive by picking the garbage for recyclables. Enter Muniz, who offers to re-create their portraits using refuse, sell the artwork at London’s most prestigious auction house, and deliver the profits back to the catadores to help their community. 2010, 35mm, in English and Portuguese with English subtitles, 99 minutes.
The Human Frontier: Scott Foundas on the Films of Lucy Walker
Lucy Walker, writes critic Scott Foundas, uses her documentary camera to map a majestic and sometimes treacherous landscape: the human frontier. Over two decades, she has traveled to the literal ends of the earth—from the peaks of Everest to the depths of a Brazilian landfill, Tsunami-ravaged Japan to post-Fidel Cuba—to chronicle stories of resilience and rehabilitation, and of individuals and families, even entire populations, navigating extraordinary seasons of change. And no matter how seemingly “foreign” the milieu, Walker achieves the same bracing intimacy with her subjects.
Person to Person: Lucy Walker’s Small-P Political Documentaries
“I always think of myself as a ‘small-p political’ person,” says documentarian Lucy Walker, whose films include The Crash Reel, Waste Land, and Countdown to Zero. “The things that have the most impact on me are personal stories, stories of individuals. I believe that human beings mirror one another. We look to each other to relate to one another and learn. So in my movies I try to allow the audience to experience a world they’ve never seen through people they wouldn’t otherwise meet.”
