Waste Land (2010), is a movie that has gotten a lot of press. It was even nominated for an Academy Award in 2011. This documentary follows around an artist, Vik Muniz, on his journey to create art from trash. Muniz returns to Brazil for this journey. He is originally from Sao Paulo but the documentary takes place in Rio de Janeiro.
At first Muniz focuses on learning about the society that has developed around Jardim Gramacho, Brazil’s largest landfill. This landfill was created in 1970 and then a community formed around it. This community consisted of scavengers digging through the trash for resources (materials to be sold, food, etc.). The scavengers then grew and created official jobs out of it in 1995. They began to focus on recyclable materials that could be sold for profit. The pickers then formed their own organization, ACAMJG (the Association of Recycling Pickers of Jardim Gramacho). This association helped organize selling to recycling companies and pay the workers wages depending on the materials they picked. An average pay for a worker is about $20 a day. But they are still working in trash, which sometimes includes medical waste.
Muniz focused on several of the workers and the documentary follows their lives and tells their story. They discuss how they became a picker, how long they have been a picker and their family life. After learning their story, Muniz took a photograph of each picker that he interviewed. The photo was more than just a close up of their face, it was telling their story. He then blew the photo up and had the pickers help fill in the shadows of the photo with trash and recyclables. He then took another photo of the photograph filled with trash. This artwork was eventually sold off and Muniz split the proceeds with the pickers which helped them move on to other jobs if they chose to. In 2012 the landfill closed and the government plans to eventually open a park on top of the landfill.
To see these people putting themselves in this situation to support their family was very moving. In their defense, they said it’s a better job than being involved in drugs or sex trade. It still astounds me the amount of trash that is produced by people and how easily we could reduce it with just recycling. But we don’t recycle, for whatever reason. This movie was very interesting and I would highly recommend it to anyone.
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