"Manufactured Landscapes"
"I had to cross some unknown territory through Pennsylvania, which happened to be one of the largest strip mining areas in the United States. All of a sudden, I was in this town called Frackville and I thought, 'something feels different here'.
"I started to drive around the slag heaps and then finally stood in one spot.
It was then I realized that as far as my eye could see, everything had been transformed.
There was nothing natural left."
- Edward Burtynsky
"Manufactured Landscapes" is a feature length documentary on the world and work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky. Burtynsky makes large-scale photographs of "manufactured landscapes" - quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines, dams.
He photographs civilization's materials and debris, but in a way people describe as "stunning" or "beautiful", and so raises all kinds of questions about ethics and aesthetics without trying to easily answer them.
The film follows Burtynsky to china as he travels the country photographing the evidence and effects of China's massive industrial revolution. Sites such as the Three Gorges Dam, which is bigger by 50 percent than any other dam in the world and displaced more than a million people, factory floors more than a kilometer long, and the breathtaking scale of Shanghai's urban renewal are subjects for Burtynsky's lens and the motion picture camera.
Shot in Super-16 film, "Manufactured Landscapes" extends the narrative streams of Burtynsky's photographs, allowing us to meditate on our profound impact on the planet and witness both the epicenters of industrial endeavor, and the dumping grounds of its waste
From the Director:
"What makes the photographs so powerful is Burtynsky's refusal to make them didactic. We are all implicated here, the images tell us: there are no easy answers.
"The film continues this approach of presenting complexity, without trying to reach
simplistic judgments or reductive resolutions. In the process, it tries to shift our
consciousness about the world and the way we live in it."
- Jennifer Baichwal
Awards and nominations
- Best Documentary - 2007 Genie Awards
- Best Canadian Film - Toronto International Film Festival
- Best Canadian Film & Best Documentary - Toronto Film Critics Association Awards
- Nominated for Grand Jury Prize- Sundance Film Festival 2007
