CPFF 2018: Waste Land
“Muniz wants to ask the people there what is important to them and transform the trash that they are defined by into art that properly represents them.”
WASTE LAND (Lucy Walker, 2010) screens at Christie Pits Film Festival on Sunday July 29 with short films Bird (dir Molly Parker) and
What Remains (dir Lisa Rideout & Corinne Dunphy).
What does a society do with the aspects of itself it doesn’t want? Usually, the answer tends to be to put them somewhere they cannot be seen. This applies to items as much as it does to people. In Brazil there is a landfill called Jardim Gramacho just outside of Rio de Janeiro. It is the largest landfill in the world. It is also the place where the poorest of Brazil’s society live. The streets are filled with garbage. The houses are made with garbage. The landfill is what generates the economy of the town.
The film follows artist Vik Muniz as he sets out to accomplish changing the lives of the residents of the Jardim Gramacho landfill through his art. An important theme in his work is to use art to transport people to a new way of thinking. Muniz grew up poor in Brazil and got shot in the leg while trying to break up a fight. He worked hard for a better life and is now a famous artist living in New York. His pieces are made from detritus and are frequently a commentary on classism.
Muniz explains his “Sugar Children” series as a way to fill in the gap between the beaten down sugar plantation workers in the Caribbean and their happy children. He took photographs of these kids and used sugar to replicate their images as a haunting reminder that it’s sugar that can take away that happiness.
Muniz is preoccupied with the ideas of classism and elitism because of his own experiences in Brazil, where the ideology exists as a plague infecting even the most educated. He explains that the people who live on Jardim Gramacho are considered to be as low as the trash they work with by the rest of Brazilian society. Muniz wants to ask the people there what is important to them and transform the trash that they are defined by into art that properly represents them.
The men and women who live there work as pickers (or catadores) in the landfill, retrieving whatever recyclable materials are considered to be valuable at the time by the wholesalers. One of the managers of the landfill informs us that the pickers take out 200 tons of recyclable material from the landfill per day. That’s equivalent to the garbage produced by a city of 400,000 people. He says that the catadores are valuable to the landfill because they help to increase its capacity. 70% of Rio’s trash ends up in the Jardim Gramacho landfill.
Far from being depressed by their circumstances, the pickers are proud of the work that they accomplish. However, they are aware that they are being taken advantage of and are starting to organize to fight for better conditions. The Association of Pickers of Jardim Gramacho (ACAMJG) has come to fruition to create what is essentially a union for pickers. One of their sticking points is that the government needs to create a much better recycling program. The catadores are the ones out in the trenches and see how much unnecessary garbage is out there. It’s polluting the environment, clogging the sewers, and of course, piling up in the landfill of Jardim Gramacho.
A lot of the time there is a cold distance between artist and subject, one that creates an unequal power dynamic. However, Muniz is able to gain the trust of the pickers rather quickly as they recognize that he wants to raise awareness for them. The men and women of ACAMJG become quite open with Muniz and discuss many subjects with him. They tell him about their association’s aims, the history of gang violence in the area, their personal troubles, their philosophies and even introduce Muniz to their families.
From these discussions and revelations of the personal identities of the catadores, Muniz is able to come up with photographs that reflect their personalities. This isn’t a commercial for a charity where Sarah Mclachlan wails over images of sad yet anonymous children’s faces. You get to actually understand what these people are really like. People like Isis—a woman who loves being in front of the camera but lost her family through tragedy. Or Tiao—the President of ACAMJG and a family man who wants something better for his daughter. Zumbi—who picks out books from the landfill because he loves to read and shares them with his fellow catadores. Suelem—who has worked in the landfill since she was 7, has two kids at 18, and feels lucky she doesn’t have to prostitute herself. And Irma—who gets the truck drivers to give her leftover food from the markets to make sure that no one working in the landfill goes hungry. This is a community of individuals that takes care of each other despite the poverty they live in.
The pickers guess at the history of the people who have thrown away the trash. They make up little stories to entertain each other. It’s fitting then that Muniz uses the trash from the landfill to tell the stories of these catadores to the world. They even help him create the art that they have inspired. All the proceeds go to the people of this community. Muniz’s aim for this project was twofold: to raise awareness of the lives of the pickers of the Jardim Gramacho landfill and to raise money to help them out. He was able to accomplish both with his art. But the third thing that he accomplished is that the catadores have been shown another reality and recognized their own humanity.
WASTE LAND (Lucy Walker, 2010) screens at Christie Pits Film Festival on Sunday July 29 with short films Bird (dir Molly Parker) and
What Remains (dir Lisa Rideout & Corinne Dunphy).
