[act-ma] Thursday 12/17: "Waste Land" - Free UPandOUT film screening [please see note for email help]

[pf soto]

  waste land flyer screenshot

*Note: i fried my computa :-(
am in process of reconstructing my address book, and setting up new PC :-(
*

  * *If you got this from act-ma or this was forwarded to you, AND you
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*Many thanks, and HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!!*


  WasteLand

[seetrailer <http://youtube.com/watch?v=sNlwh8vT2NU>]

Showing Thursday, Dec17, in Cambridge
[please download & distribute flyer 
<http://rule19.org/download-film/film-151217-WasteLand.pdf>]

*/Waste Land/* follows renowned artist Vik Muniz as he journeys from 
Brooklyn to his native Brazil and the world's largest garbage dump, 
Jardim Gramacho, on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. There he 
photographs an eclectic band of /catadores/ -- or garbage pickers. The 
catadores are the ultimate marginalized population; unemployed in any 
traditional sense of the word, they resort to picking valuable 
recyclable materials from the garbage thrown away by more fortunate 
Brazilians.

Muniz--known for using unconventional materials to create portraits of 
marginalized people--on meeting the amazing characters who work at the 
landfill, decides to turn the project into a collaboration with them. He 
photographs pickers individually at the landfill, projects the images 
onto the floor of a massive warehouse nearby, and then works with the 
catadores to use recyclable items from the dump to recreate the images 
on the floor. In the end, vibrant, complex, and essentially human 
portraits emerge, revealing both dignity and despair as the catadores 
begin to re-imagine their lives.

"/The moment when one thing turns into another is the most beautiful 
moment. A combination of sounds turns into music. And that applies to 
everything./" ~Vik Muniz, artist

"/People sometimes say 'But one single can?' One single can is of great 
importance. Because 99 is not 100, and that single one will make the 
difference./" ~Valter, a catadore

/"We have to think about the future because I don't want my son to be a 
picker. Although if he is, I'd be very proud... But I'd rather he be a 
lawyer to represent the pickers, you know./" ~Zumbi, a catadore

*Reviews:

*"T/hat a beautiful film could be set in the world's largest garbage 
dump sounds like an oxymoron, but acclaimed documentarian Lucy Walker 
has pulled off precisely that feat in her profoundly moving "Waste 
Land." She follows renowned Brooklyn-based, Brazilian-born artist Vik 
Muniz on a singularly ambitious project: going to Jardim Gramacho, a 
vast landfill established in 1970 north of Rio de Janeiro, photographing 
its catadores, pickers of recyclable materials, and then collaborating 
with them in transforming these photos into portraits created with 
recyclable materials. His purpose is to inspire his pickers to see 
themselves in a new way and even to re-imagine their lives/" ~Los 
Angeles Times

"/Waste Land is a film about recycling, but it's far more intriguing 
than the average eco-documentary. The subject is Brazilian garbage 
pickers, called catadores, and how an artist created striking portraits 
of a half dozen of them and transformed their lives./" ~San Francisco 
Chronicle

"/Muniz has all the trappings of success in the fickle world of 
contemporary art, but he also has deep ties to Brazil where he was born, 
48 years ago, on the working-class fringes of poverty. Tugged by those 
roots, in 2008 he set about using his art to change the lives of 
Brazil's most outcast citizens, the garbage pickers, or catadores, who 
sort and recycle the mountains of trash at Jardim Gramacho, a 321-acre 
dump outside Rio."Waste Land," directed by Lucy Walker, is a deeply 
touching documentary about his efforts and the people he encounters at 
the Jardim./" ~Minneapolis Star Tribune

"/It's not a very good title, Waste Land - this isn't a bleak film, at 
all - but just about everything else in Lucy Walker's documentary works, 
and illuminates. Traveling with the Brooklyn-based, Brazilian-born 
artist Vik Muniz - an energetic figure whose large-scale photography and 
portraiture incorporates nontraditional materials (food, wire, metal) - 
Walker sets down with her small crew in Rio de Janeiro and watches as a 
truly transformative project takes shape./" ~PhiladelphiaInquirer

"/To explain more wouldn't dilute the movie's effect, but it articulates 
its ideas visually much more effectively than prosaic words can. And 
Walker and cinematographer Dudu Miranda work a minor miracle here by 
getting you to reconsider garbage as the movie unfolds. By no means is 
the Jardim Gramacho a beautiful place—Waste Land's scenes of the trucks 
dumping loads of trash into the landfill's ever-expanding ocean of 
debris have an almost visceral effect, as you begin to start imagining 
what the place has to smell like. Yet even in this alien landscape, 
Waste Land shows that beauty is never outside the reach of people who 
never stop believing in themselves./" ~Baltimore City Paper

“/A joy to watch despite the abject poverty it contains, “WASTE LAND” 
transcends the artist-doc format and has a broad emotional appeal that 
should ensure a warm reaction from theatrical audiences. Easily as 
concerned with social and environmental issues as it is with the 
fine-art career that sets it in motion, the movie never focuses on big 
issues at the expense of the individuals it encounters/.” ~Hollywood 
Reporter

“/Especially mesmerizing are the wordless sequences of the garbage 
pickers at work—Moby-scored montages that hauntingly convey the 
otherworldly feel of the place./” ~Variety

“/Beautifully captured, this portrait of a very proud and resourceful 
underclass rightly tugged the heartstrings of everyone who saw it./”~Empire

“/With a stirring score by Moby, it’s a heart-warming tale of human 
dignity and innovation, and was a worthy winner of the World Cinema 
Documentary Audience Award./” ~ The Huffington Post

“/A sprawling Rio landfill is the star in an unsettling but 
unforgettable documentary ‘WASTE LAND’./” ~Movie Jungle

*When/where*
doors open 6:40; film starts promptly 7pm
243 Broadway, Cambridge - corner of Broadway and Windsor,
entrance on Windsor
rule19.org/videos <http://rule19.org/videos>

Please join us for a stimulating night out; bring your friends!
free film & free door prizes
[donations are encouraged]
feel free to bring your own snacks and soft drinks - no alcohol allowed

"You can't legislate good will - that comes through education." ~ Malcolm X

UPandOUT film series - see rule19.org/videos <http://rule19.org/videos>

Why should YOU care? It's YOUR money that pays for US/Israeli wars - on 
Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Palestine, Libya. Syria, Iran, So America, etc 
etc - for billionaire bailouts, for ever more ubiquitous US prisons, for 
the loss of liberty and civil rights...