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WASTE LAND follows renowned artist Vik Muniz as he journeys to the world’s largest garbage dump in Brazil where he creates striking portraits of the garbage pickers, called catadores, and transforms their lives.
Director: Lucy Walker
Share this film, so others can also learn about the transformative power of art.
Visit the official WASTE LAND website to learn more about the catadores and how you can support their transition into more qualified jobs within the new recycling plants. Donations go towards education.
Seek to reduce your garbage output. Consider what you can reuse or recycle. Try composting at home.
Visit an art museum and try looking at art the way Muniz describes: leaning forward to examine the materials used, then leaning back to take in the image as a whole. Share your experiences with others and discuss how perception can change depending on context and viewpoint.
“Vik Muniz, a Brazilian artist known for using unconventional materials to create portraits of marginalized people, set out to “paint” the catadores with the garbage they spent their days sorting through.”
Visit PBS’ Independent Lens for clips from the film, an excerpt of T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” a director’s statement from Lucy Walker, and a forum where you can share your own thoughts.
Lucy Walker dropped in New York to take part in a Q&A with moderator Morgan Spurlock following a special screening of the film. IndieWire has some snippets from the chat.
“If you throw something out in Rio de Janeiro, there is a 70% chance it will end up here, on the other side of the scenic Guanabara Bay in one of the biggest garbage heaps in Latin America.”
CNN reports on the landfill and its pickers.
Listen to our playlist with music from the film on Spotify.
“I go and collect the trash and then I transform it into art,” said one catadore.
Read the full CNN article.
“So there I was, squelching knee-deep in trash in Rio’s scariest favela on a wet afternoon, my arms too sore from vaccinations to move, my whole body wrapped mummy-like in multiple layers of noisy plastic protective clothing fit for a moon-landing… Next item on the checklist was bulletproof vehicles. The garbage smells were mugging our noses.”
Read Walker’s full essay in The Guardian.
“I’m a product of a military dictatorship.… Under a dictatorship, you cannot trust information or dispense it freely because of censorship. So Brazilians become very flexible in the use of metaphors. They learn to communicate with double meanings.”
Read more about artist Vik Muniz in this fascinating New York Times profile.
“The biggest difficulty is getting people to vindicate their rights,” said Tião Santos. Read more here.
In this NPR interview, Walker said that when Tião found out about the film’s Oscar nomination, he was overjoyed and said, “I keep thinking that the clock is going to tick to midnight and I’m going to lose my shoes and things are going to go back to the way they were before the movie… but then I remember that they can never go back the same, that this movie has changed everything for the recyclable materials pickers.”
"A MUST-SEE! Cinderella story with true grit, a brilliant cast, and an improbably big heart."
Minneapolis Star Tribune
"A joy to watch"
The Hollywood Reporter
"MESMERIZING"
Variety
