[SBIMC-general] MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES - environmental feature film - UCSB Campbell Hall - April 5 only - please distribute widely

[Bob Banner]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Peter Lackner <peterlackner at mac.com>
> Date: March 31, 2007 4:26:57 PM PDT
> To: sb-news at lists.riseup.net, "ngoma ngoma at yahoogroups.com"  
> <ngoma at yahoogroups.com>
> Subject: [sb-news] MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES - environmental feature  
> film -  UCSB Campbell Hall - April 5 only - please distribute widely
>
> Dear Friends -
> On Thursday, April 5, 2007  at 7:30 pm,  the film  MANUFACTURED  
> LANDSCAPES  will be shown at  UCSB Campbell Hall.
> If you missed the recent showings at the Santa Barbara Film  
> Festival,  this may be the only opportunity to see this multiple  
> award-winning film before its commercial release in the USA.   
> Approaching environmental consciousness and the impact of human  
> activity on nature  in a startlingly unique, powerful and beautiful  
> way,  MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES  has frequently  been defined as a an  
> invaluable supplement to Al Gore's  "An Inconvenient Truth".
>
> Premiering in Canada, it has already won awards as "Best Canadian   
> Feature Film"  and "Best Documentary"  at the Toronto Film  
> Festival, and awards at the Atlantic Film Festival and festivals in  
> Calgary and Halifax.  The US premiere just took place at the  
> Sundance Film Festival, followed by two showings at the Santa  
> Barbara International Film Festival.
>
> Lucas Lackner, my brother,  is Associate Producer, but I would be  
> recommending this film most highly even without the family  
> connection. See this week's SB Independent for an excellent  
> interview/article.
>
> Please spread the word by forwarding this message and telling  
> others about it.
>
> Thanks very much -
>
> Peter Lackner
> *******************
>
> Manufactured Landscapes
>
> Thursday, April 5, 2007 @ 7:30 PM, Campbell Hall
>
> *******
>
>
> Link to website
> “… a highly unusual viewing experience that stimulates the  
> senses and the conscience simultaneously.” The Hollywood Reporter
>
> This award-winning documentary follows artist Edward Burtynsky,  
> internationally acclaimed for his large-scale photographs of  
> “manufactured landscapes” – quarries, recycling yards,  
> factories, mines and dams – through China as he creates  
> surprisingly beautiful art from civilization’s materials and  
> debris. Capturing the evidence and effects of the country’s  
> massive industrial revolution, Burtynsky’s photographs are a  
> reflective meditation on human industrial endeavors and their  
> impact on the environment. Winner of the Best Canadian Feature Film  
> Award at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival.
>
> (Jennifer Baichwal, 2006, 86 min.)
>
> General public $6.00 / UCSB Students $5.00
>
> more info at:
> https://artsandlectures.sa.ucsb.edu/Details.aspx?PerfNum=707
>
>
>
>
> ****************
>

>
> MOVIE REVIEW: Manufacturing change - Documentary follows  
> photographer capturing China's boom economy and mangled environment
>
> By Ted Mills, NEWS-PRESS CORRESPONDENT
> March 30, 2007 10:54 AM
> Jennifer Baichwal's film begins with a long tracking shot along a  
> factory floor in China, peering down aisle after aisle at besmocked  
> and handkerchiefed workers assembling an unseen consumer good. Just  
> when the audience thinks the shot is over, it continues on: more  
> aisles, more workers, and never a clue as to what they're making.
>
> This brave opening statement, absent of music and voice-over until  
> much later when the audience has grown restless, sums up the  
> terrifying wonder of globalization explored in "Manufactured  
> Landscapes," showing Thursday night at Campbell Hall.
>
> Our guide through China and Bangladesh is Edward Burtynsky, a large- 
> scale photographer of man-made landscapes who documents how  
> industry and globalization change the earth. Some of the images are  
> grim, some strangely beautiful, but they always make the viewer  
> stop and consider the impact of our industrial behavior.
>
> Those who have followed China's economic rise will find much of  
> interest here. Since the late 1970s, China has been moving toward a  
> more market-driven economy, and has become the fourth largest  
> economy in the world when measured by nominal Gross Domestic  
> Product. Those at the bottom of the econmic ladder who suffered in  
> one way, now suffer in another. They remain replaceable parts in a  
> huge oil-stoked and smoke-belching machine.
>
> In terms of ratios, this economic shift has been staggering.  
> According to Burtynsky, under Mao Zedong China was 90 percent  
> agrarian and 10 percent urban. The plan under the post-Deng  
> Xiaoping leaders is for China to become 30 percent agrarian and 70  
> percent urban.
>
> Burtynsky travels to small villages where companies from all over  
> the world ship computer parts to be recycled. It sounds  
> environmentally conscious, until we see villagers exposing  
> themselves to the toxic chemicals that escape when circuit boards  
> are heated for valuable metals. Cadmium, phosphorus and other  
> toxins have made the villagers' water supply an undrinkable  
> chemical soup.
>
> China's Three Gorges Dam, which will be the largest dam in the  
> world when complete, has displaced more than a million villagers.  
> In an ironic twist that Gogol or Kundera would find dark and  
> delicious, villagers are paid by the brick to knock down and  
> "recycle" their own homes, essentially erasing their own existence,  
> before the waters come.
>
> Elsewhere, the upwardly mobile, newly rich Chinese find themselves  
> caught up in the progress that is tearing down centuries-old  
> neighborhoods in Shanghai to make room for more and more  
> skyscrapers. Baichwal shows one well-to-do real estate agent in her  
> gaudy mansion, displaying her bookcase full of Chinese antiquities.  
> "The wood is colored red. Red means happiness," she says in an  
> unhappy voice.
>
> Burtynsky is aware his own profession wouldn't be possible without  
> the raw materials used to make his camera or the silver used in the  
> film emulsion. All he can do is document what is happening and make  
> people think, without being stridently political. "Manufactured  
> Landscapes" does the same thing by following and observing the  
> photographer at work. With its disturbing images and music, the  
> film grabs both heart and brain and won't let go.
>
> MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES
>
> Length: 1 hour, 30 minutes; Rated: Unrated; Playing at: 7:30 p.m.  
> Thursday at UCSB's Campbell Hall
>
> All Content Copyright © 2007 Santa Barbara News-Press / Ampersand  
> Publishing, LLC unless otherwise specified.
>
>
> *******
> more links and info:
>
>
> http://www.edhat.com/sbfilm007/onemovie.cfm?onetitle=Manufactured% 
> 20Landscapes
>
> Manufactured Landscapes
> Canada   80 minutes
> DIRECTOR: Jennifer Baichwal
> [ show times ]
>
> Jennifer Baichwal's latest documentary, MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES, is  
> ostensibly a portrait of Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky,  
> who specializes in large-scale studies of industrial vistas. But  
> the film offers far more than just a straightforward snapshot of  
> the artist. Indeed, MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES is as much about the  
> aesthetic, social and spiritual dimensions of industrialization and  
> globalization as it is about Burtynsky’s work.
>
> His interest in humanity's impact on nature led Burtynsky to China,  
> where most of the world's raw materials - and much of its waste -  
> wind up. The film follows his trips to China and Bangladesh, where  
> young men immerse themselves in toxic sludge while tearing apart  
> giant ships.
>
> Burtynsky's photographs tend to emphasize the aesthetic dimension  
> of overhauled landscapes, stressing the lurid and curious beauty of  
> these metamorphoses. In Burtynsky's photos, human beings only make  
> appearances as lone figures or in massive choreographed groups. At  
> the same time, the film focuses on the human cogs in the machine,  
> contrasting Burtynsky's epic photographs with the tedium the  
> workers endure.
>
> Conceived with a startling awareness of the repercussions of  
> humanity’s mania to control and repackage our environment,  
> MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES is a beautifully shot and profoundly  
> unsettling look at contemporary existence.
>
> - Steve Gravestock
>
> ***********
> Site with a link to  trailer  video excerpts:
> http://www.mongrelmedia.com/films/ManufacturedLandscapes.html
>
>
>
> Manufactured Landscapes - a feature documentary by Jennifer Baichwal
>
> 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 that country’s massive  
> industrial revolution. Sites such as the Three Gorges Dam, which is  
> bigger by 50% than any other dam in the world and displaced over a  
> million people, factory floors over a kilometre long, and the  
> breathtaking scale of Shanghai’s urban renewal are subjects for  
> his lens and our motion picture camera.
>
> Shot in Super-16mm 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  
> epicentres of industrial endeavour and the dumping grounds of its  
> waste. What makes the photographs so powerful is his refusal in  
> them to be didactic. We are all implicated here, they tell us:  
> there are no easy answers. The film continues this approach of  
> presenting complexity, without trying to reach simplistic  
> judgements or reductive resolutions. In the process, it tries to  
> shift our consciousness about the world and the way we live in it.
>
> 2006, Canada, 90 mins.
>
>
>

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