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Waste Land

  • 2010
  • Not Rated
  • 1h 39m
IMDb RATING
7.8/10
9.5K
YOUR RATING
Waste Land (2010)
Filmed over nearly three years, Waste Land follows renowned artist Vik Muniz as he journeys from his home base in Brooklyn to his native Brazil and the world's largest garbage dump, Jardim Gramacho, located on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro.
Play trailer2:16
2 Videos
21 Photos
Documentary

On the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro is Jardim Gramacho, the world's largest landfill, where men and women sift through garbage for a living. Artist Vik Muniz produces portraits of the workers... Read allOn the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro is Jardim Gramacho, the world's largest landfill, where men and women sift through garbage for a living. Artist Vik Muniz produces portraits of the workers and learns about their lives.On the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro is Jardim Gramacho, the world's largest landfill, where men and women sift through garbage for a living. Artist Vik Muniz produces portraits of the workers and learns about their lives.

  • Directors
    • Lucy Walker
    • Karen Harley
    • João Jardim
  • Star
    • Vik Muniz
  • See production info at IMDbPro
  • IMDb RATING
    7.8/10
    9.5K
    YOUR RATING
    • Directors
      • Lucy Walker
      • Karen Harley
      • João Jardim
    • Star
      • Vik Muniz
    • 24User reviews
    • 86Critic reviews
    • 78Metascore
  • See production info at IMDbPro
    • Nominated for 1 Oscar
      • 29 wins & 13 nominations total

    Videos2

    Waste Land
    Trailer 2:16
    Waste Land
    Lucy Walker in Three Films
    Clip 3:12
    Lucy Walker in Three Films
    Lucy Walker in Three Films
    Clip 3:12
    Lucy Walker in Three Films

    Photos21

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    Top cast1

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    Vik Muniz
    Vik Muniz
    • Self
    • Directors
      • Lucy Walker
      • Karen Harley
      • João Jardim
    • All cast & crew
    • Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

    User reviews24

    7.89.4K
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    Featured reviews

    8brenogualdani

    Good will sometimes is not enough

    Amazing documentary in wich the high points are the stories, speaches and images of the catadores and their realities. The trajectory of Vik is just a background for the other characters. While the catadores are brilliant and impactfull, Vik is the low point of the film with some problematic lines and unfortunate placements. Good will sometimes is not enough and awareness is a lot needed when working with a very critical situation like the portrayed. But the role of the workers make the positive balance of the film. We can learn a lot with them.
    9jm@downtownreel.com

    Art helps recycle lives!

    This film is a remarkable surprise! A clever, concerned, screen-grab of homeless lives that gives an ounce hope where one would least expect it. Internationally acclaimed artist, Vik Muniz, is our guide on a journey through garbage, guts, and glamor. With a smile on his face that belies many of the bleak images he shares, he outlines what is, perhaps, an early chapter in the "ecological medical journal" that must be written to save our planet. The characters in Waste Land by far overwhelm this 'preachy' review, and are 1,000 times warmer, to boot -- go see it before it's gone -- to NETFLIX -- As proceeds from your ticket save lives!
    10howard.schumann

    An inspiring documentary

    Following in the path of Edvard Munch who said, "I will paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love," artist Vik Muniz travels from his studio in Brooklyn to Rio de Janeiro to "give back" to the people of Brazil where he was born and raised. In Lucy Walker's (Countdown to Zero) inspiring documentary, Waste Land, winner of the Audience Award for World Cinema Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival, we are taken inside the squalid landfill known as Jardim Gramacho on the outskirts of Rio to see the largest garbage dump in the world where 7,000 tons of Rio's trash is deposited every day. The film is seen through the eyes of the "pickers," called catadores who live and work in this squalid environment, eking out a living of $20-25 U.S. a day.

    The catadores, who number in the thousands, work under burning hot sun and overpowering odors collecting and selling recyclable materials such as bottles, plastic, and metal to wholesalers and middlemen who turn them into such resalable items as buckets or bumpers for automobiles. Vic Muniz' plan is to select and paint a group of six catadores to pose as photographic subjects that will mimic such classic paintings as "The Death of Marat" by Jacques-Louis David. Money from sales of the resulting art will go to the pickers association for the benefit of the workers. The project included Tiao, the leader of ACAMJG (Association of Collectors of the Metropolitan Landfill of Jardim Gramacho) who went on a hunger strike to dramatize the conditions of the pickers and built an organization that helped create a skills-training center and a medical clinic for the workers.

    There was also Zumbi, a member of the association, who began a library from his home from books that had been discarded, Irma, a cook who makes stews and roasts from edible meat to feed the workers, Suelem, an 18-year old girl who has been working in the garbage dump since she was only seven years old, and Valter, an elderly man who entertains with stories and songs and who decides to participate because he believes that "it will raise awareness of all us pickers." Once the initial photographs are made, Muniz projects an enlarged version of each photo onto the floor of his studio and hires the pickers to add refuse from the landfill onto the canvas, photographing the result from overhead. This then becomes the finished art work, ready to be exhibited at auctions and museums around the world with the pickers traveling to such cities as London and New York, the first time they have ever left Gramacho.

    Waste Land is not only a biography of an artist, but a look at the artist in the context of the community in which his art is created. Muniz reveals the courage and resilience of the people in spite of their grinding poverty and depressing environment. Many are former middle class residents of the suburbs who chose the life of the picker rather than becoming prostitutes or drug dealers and are happy with their choice. Though Muniz's goal was, "to be able to change the lives of a group of people with the same material that they deal with every day," he never dreamed that his work would impact the lives of the people so dramatically.

    Through his efforts, many of the residents who worked for him have changed their life and either reconciled with their families or gone on to more rewarding jobs. Modernization has also begun to take shape at Gramacho. A recycling plant has been built and the workers have been separated into categories for more efficient organization. Though admittedly just a beginning, Muniz has demonstrated that the power of art is available to all people regardless of their circumstances, allowing them to experience their inner beauty and believe in themselves in a new way. Not succumbing to the temptations of melodramatic excess, Waste Land has been shortlisted for an Oscar for Best Documentary and fully deserves to be among the finalists.
    9claudio_carvalho

    A Must See Uplifting Documentary

    The Brazilian artist Vik Muniz rooted in New York decides to make the difference and travels to Jardim Gramacho, the largest landfill of the world in the outskirt of Rio de Janeiro, with the intention to help the pickers to improve their lives using his art. Vik recalls an event when he was very poor and lived in Brazil. He tried to break up a fight between two men, and he was shot when he was walking to his car. Later the shooter gave him some money that allowed Vik to travel to USA.

    Vik and his friend Fábio spend two years in Jardim Gramacho and get closer to a group of pickers of recyclable materials and takes pictures of them. He uses his talent to make art using recyclable material and photographs the results. Then he travels to London and sells one of the portraits in an auction. With the money, the pickers buy a truck, equipment and build a leaning center and a library. The pickers that worked with him leans how to improve their lives and leave Jardim Gramacho.

    "Waste Land" is a must see uplifting documentary that shows another side of Rio de Janeiro unusual in the cinema: the lives of people that earn their lives honestly working in the greatest landfill of the world and how they could improve their lives with social investment.

    Vik Muniz gives a lesson to our corrupt politicians that embezzle money that are dedicated to people of the lower classes and shows how it is possible to improve lives using the money properly. His humanitarian work should be publicized worldwide and specially in my country. Maybe in the future, the president and politicians would be outraged not with handcuffed corrupts but with the damage that corruption causes to our people. My vote is nine.

    Title (Brazil): "Lixo Extraordinário" ("Extraordinary Garbage")
    JohnDeSando

    Not a waste to watch

    Vic Muniz's art has never been as influential as when he decided to spend 2 years at the world's largest landfill outside of Rio. The catadores or pickers became his subjects, a ragtag group of Shakespearean types who love what they do for a living, making something out of someone else's nothing. Waste land is the title for this engrossing documentary about art as few have experienced it till now.

    Making a living is what they made until Muniz changed the way they looked a recyclables. He bonded the artifacts with the humans and created memorable portraits of the pickers. A show in London, which they attended, became a catalyst for change in their lives and in the lives of spectators who had no idea Rio's garbage had become Rio's recyclables under the hands of these professional pickers.

    Muniz makes sure no one condescends, no one feels sorry for his subjects, some of whom have never known anything but the landfill and others who have chosen it rather than deal drugs or prostitute themselves. Waste Land is as dignified a story about the potential of the poor class to rise out of its garbage and transform it into art and a better life. For this reason, Muniz can stand with the great humanitarians like Albert Schwitzer and Mother Theresa.

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    Storyline

    Edit

    Did you know

    Edit
    • Trivia
      The Gramacho landfill was in fact deactivated in 2012. It is now a green area once again, wherein its native life has returned. However, many of the pickers forced into retirement were left without jobs and in poor quality of life.
    • Quotes

      Valter: [talking about the importance of recycling] 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.

    • Connections
      Featured in The 83rd Annual Academy Awards (2011)
    • Soundtracks
      Isolate
      Written by Moby

      Performed by Moby

      Produced by Moby

      Moby appears courtesy of © Little Idiot Music

      Published by Richard Hall Music, Inc

      Administered by Kobalt Music Publishing Limited

      All rights reserved

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    FAQ17

    • How long is Waste Land?Powered by Alexa

    Details

    Edit
    • Release date
      • January 21, 2011 (Brazil)
    • Countries of origin
      • Brazil
      • United Kingdom
    • Official sites
      • Official Facebook
      • Official site
    • Languages
      • Portuguese
      • English
    • Also known as
      • Wasteland
    • Filming locations
      • Jardim Gramacho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil(landfill)
    • Production companies
      • Almega Projects
      • O2 Filmes
    • See more company credits at IMDbPro

    Box office

    Edit
    • Budget
      • $1,500,000 (estimated)
    • Gross US & Canada
      • $187,716
    • Opening weekend US & Canada
      • $9,806
      • Oct 31, 2010
    • Gross worldwide
      • $291,307
    See detailed box office info on IMDbPro

    Tech specs

    Edit
    • Runtime
      1 hour 39 minutes
    • Color
      • Color
    • Sound mix
      • Dolby Digital
    • Aspect ratio
      • 1.85 : 1

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