MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES

Year: 2006
USA: Zeitgeist Films
UK: BFI (UK Wide)
Cast: Edward Burtynsky
Director: Jennifer Baichwal
Country: Canada
USA: 90 mins
UK: 86 mins
UK Certificate: U contains no material likely to offend or harm
USA Release Date: 20 June 2007 (Limited Release)
UK Release Date: 9 May 2008 (Limited Release)
US Distributor
UK Distributor

Synopsis

Winner of Best Canadian Feature Film at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES is the striking new documentary on the world and work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky.

Internationally acclaimed for his large-scale photographs of "manufactured landscapes" - quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines and dams - Burtynsky creates stunningly beautiful art from civilization's materials and debris.

The film follows him through China, as he shoots the evidence and effects of that country's massive industrial revolution. With breathtaking sequences, the filmmakers also extend the narratives of Burtynsky's photographs, allowing us to meditate on our impact on the planet and witness both the epicentres of industrial endeavour and the dumping grounds of its waste.

In the spirit of such environmentally enlightening sleeper-hits as AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH and RIVERS AND TIDES, MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES powerfully shifts our consciousness about the world and the way we live in it, without simplistic judgments or reductive resolutions.