Manufactured Landscapes (Edward Burtynsky)
Sunday, September 21st, 2008
From the BFI website… “Jennifer Baichwal’s award-winning documentary centres on renowned artist Edward Burtynsky whose large-scale photographs portray the devastating impact of industrial expansion on the environment.
Baichwal observes the artist at work amid some of the most surreal landscapes of the 21st century: China’s mountains of computer waste; the Yangtze River where whole towns are disappearing in the flooding caused by the Three Gorges Dam; the shipbreaking yards of Bangladesh; Shanghai, with its increasingly crowded skyline and millions of new inhabitants.
Eschewing polemics, Burtynsky aims simply to bring these landscapes into our consciousness, to provoke reflection on some highly inconvenient truths. Yet Baichwal’s film also exposes a tension between ethics and aesthetics: aren’t these images of apocalyptic splendour just a little too seductive? One thing’s for sure: it’s a terrible beauty that’s born.”
I saw this about a month ago and it blew me away. Although it was filmed back in 2006 it only saw a UK DVD release this week via the British Film Institute so I’ve been resisting the temptation to write this post until now.
Manufactured Landscapes is the most visually stunning documentary I’ve seen in a long time. It seems to have received a little criticism for the lack of any overtly ethical component in it’s narrative but for me that worked out well, providing an opportunity to absorb all the information on offer and consider the ethical connotations for myself once the film was over. As a film about social and economical issues, arguably perhaps it does lack something in addressing it’s ethical responsibility but as a film about a photographer and his work, I think it’s right on point.
I read another review where the author called the film boring (!!) which to me is madness. There’s no doubt this documentary takes it’s time but (in my view) anything else would be inappropriate and fail to do justice to the unquestionable depth and detail of Burtynsky’s work. For me, the combination of relaxed pace and calmly meandering, non didactic narrative was close to perfect. I seriously can’t recommend this enough.
If you’re still not convinced, there’s a well executed New York Times review here from sometime around the films US release date last year.
Finally, here’s a 10 minute compilation of excerpts from youtube…
John Cardiel (16 part Epicly Later’d profile)
Sunday, September 14th, 2008
I forgot about Epicly Later’d for a while so going back to check what I missed and finding this, really made my week. All 16 parts is going to take you over an hour but it’s so worthwhile.
From VBS… “This is the John Cardiel episode of Epicly Later’d. It began like all the episodes of the show begin, just meeting up with a dude to talk about skateboarding. But John is such a legendary skater with such a long and amazing personal history that to try and crush everything into a normal 15-minute episode would have been a joke. Over the course of filming and editing, this thing just grew and grew until now I almost want to say it’s a full-length documentary.”
“From his youth in the sticks of Grass Valley to becoming one of the most loved and respected skateboarders of all time to miraculously recovering from a horrific, paralyzing injury, we are proud to bring you John Cardiel’s story as best as we can tell it.”
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
You can find the three clips above along with the remaining parts 4-16 via the Epicly Later’d page on VBS.tv
2007 LA River Graff Jam & Getting Up Documentary
Thursday, September 11th, 2008
I’m short on time to be posting stuff as usual but here’s a couple of Graff related links I recently received via Gabe at miamigraffiti.com. Hopefully they’ll go some way towards filling the gap…
First up is a 6 minute film of a graff jam back in September of last year where locals were joined by writers from out of town to paint a 10,000 square foot section of the LA Rivers concrete waterway…
Next is an even older, 30 minute docu called Getting Up. Graffiti is big business these days. What started life as an illegal activity has spawned a far more socially accepted component with more and more authorized areas to paint and huge corporate entities like McDonalds and Coca Cola happily adopting the visual element to promote and package their products.
I’m going to avoid controversy and stop short of pushing any personal views but I think most people would agree that for all the advantages of letting people get on with their ideas without the dangers of being caught, the absence of that particular pressure means a large part of the original culture is lost. In regards to peoples motivations for being involved at least.
This film is very much focused around more traditional views of what Graffiti is about and as such, it gets a little over zealous at points. I’ll let you decide for yourself when people are starting to waste words . For me though, this is a reassuring little window into how, regardless of it’s long, ongoing proliferation into the mass media, the cultural roots of this are safe for now.
Part 1…
Part 2…
Part 3…
