Sadly, Waste Land didn't win the Oscar for best documentary, but the nomination helped give the film and its stars even more publicity, and to get out the word about the catadores and Vik's work.
Great news! Waste Land, the documentary about Vik Muniz, is getting an official US release! Thanks to Arthouse Films for providing the dates, so look for your city below. The film opens in New York this week, and will be rolled out across the country through February 2011.
The movie was recently featured in a great New York Times article, along with a little bio about Vik. It was also covered in the Brazilian press, since the movie was shown at the Mostra de SP this past weekend. The film is slated for an early 2011 release in Brazil. Read more about the movie here and here.
I cannot stress enough how incredible this movie is. I saw it twice in theaters and told everyone I know to see it, so please go check it out! It is honestly one of the most wonderful, inspiring movies you will ever see.
Vik Muniz is all over the place these days, and I recently discovered that he spoke at TED a few years ago. For those of you who haven't had the chance to see the spectacular documentary about Vik Muniz's work, Waste Land, here's a great video that provides a short overview of Vik's career and creative inspiration, as well as a bit of background on how he got started.
It's available in English, but you can also watch it with Portuguese subtitles here. It shows some of Vik's earlier work, as well as charting the different mediums he's worked with throughout his career. It also shows Vik's clever sense of humor and some of very funny sculptures I'd never seen before.
With more time and money, I would have gone to every movie at the MoMA Premiere Brazil Film Festival this year, but unfortunately, I only made it to a few. The first movie I saw was a big disappointment, as was the most recent one I saw. Fortunately, one of the films was so good that it made up for the other two.
The not so thrilling movie was Terras, a documentary about the border region of the Amazon. I could not disagree more with the Huffington Post review:
"Terra sets the stage for the contrasts of social cohabitation that occur between the indigenous Indians, transient locals and governments. The director uses the camera to seduce the viewer with gorgeous portraits of the people that migrate throughout this ambiguous territory, as well as the kaleidoscope of colors and textures that comprise the land itself."
If by seduce, you mean put to sleep, then yes, that just about covers it. While this movie had potential to be really interesting - there were some good interviews with various locals who discussed identity, the Amazon, and the concept of borders - there was absolutely no context or information given about anything or anyone, and an absurd amount of time was spent on close ups of random textures in the forest or uninteresting scenes that went on far too long. This film would be more appropriate as an exhibit at MoMa, one you pass through to look at for a few minutes, but not as a full length feature. Several people left during the movie, including our friends who came with us, and Eli squirmed until the anti-climatic end of the film.
But meanwhile, Lixo Extraordinario (translated in English as Wasteland, though it literally means "Extraordinary Trash"), was by far one of the best documentaries I've ever seen.
First of all, I love Vik Muniz. I saw his exhibit in the film when it first opened in Rio, and went twice I loved it so much. But I didn't realize the extent of the story behind the trash series, and this movie blew me away.
The film follows Vik from the beginning to the end of his trash project, where he goes to one of the biggest landfills in the world to collect trash to use for a new series. But instead of staying in the comfort of his beautiful Brooklyn apartment, he ventures to Rio (he is paulista, by the way), and spends time in easily one of the most godforsaken places in Brazil. He hires the garbage pickers at the dump site to collect pieces for his project, who normally collect materials they can recycle. He also hires them to pose for photographs and arrange the trash on projections of the photographs to create amazing works of art. He promises them all of the proceeds from the sales of the pieces so that the money will go back to the community.
While the movie is about art, sustainability, the environment, and poverty, its least obvious theme is classism. Though there are allusions to it, the movie doesn't fully explain just how low on the rung these catadores are; to compare them to the Indian caste system, in Brazil, they're the untouchables. Vik, meanwhile, is very wealthy and from a very different world, though he grew up poor. He purposefully designs a project with social ramifications intended to help those who have very little. (Be prepared: the scenes of poverty are jarring). There's a scene where Vik argues with his wife about the long term effects the project will have on the catadores; she argues he's doing them harm, by giving them a spot in the limelight when they will just have to go back to picking trash. His attitude is different - "If I were in their shoes, I would do the same thing." In the end, there are no illusions that the project couldn't completely change everyone's lives, since it's just not possible. But the experience undoubtedly had a positive, empowering effect on everyone involved. It's also important to note that this scenario is not necessarily the norm for Brazil. While philanthropy is definitely growing, this type of project where the benefactor literally worked side by side with the beneficiaries, so to speak, is not typical for wealthy expat Brazilians, and it was extremely inspiring to see.
The other key facet of the film that makes it such a joy to watch are the catadores themselves, who are each charming in their own way. Tião, the head of the pickers' collective, is the obvious star, but every single person brought something different and compelling to the project (I especially loved Magna). Valter, one of the old-timers, will forever change the way you think about recycling (and really, doing anything to help others) with his simple words of wisdom. "Noventa e nove não é cem," he says, matter-of-factly.
I can pretty much guarantee you'll weep and re-evaluate your life by the end of this movie. Go see it!
Awhile back, I got a marketing e-mail from someone at the Let's Colour project, but since it was something of a form e-mail with a brief mention about Rio de Janeiro, I sort of glazed over it, also in part because I have been really busy and overwhelmed. This was unfortunate because later on, I found out more about the project and found some fun videos on YouTube (via The Good Blood). The lesson is that personalized emails with direct links to multimedia and explicit explanations about why bloggers should care about a project are much more effective than copying and pasting some generic text.
In any event, this is a bit late, but please check out The Colour Project in Rio de Janeiro, with the wonderful, eccentric, charming, Portunhol-speaking Selaron and his fellow Lapa artist, Mimi.
Yesterday, I forcibly dragged Eli Eli and I headed over to the Museum of Modern Art to check out the new exhibit, a huge exposition by Vik Muniz, a Brazilian artist who lives in New York. Though the other current exhibit, a celebration of the sixtieth birthday of the museum, is OK, this exhibit blows out it of the water. The museum was filled to the brim with well-heeled Cariocas, preppy gay men, and artist types, which I imagine it will be for the next week or so.
Vik Muniz was born in 1961 and grew up in a working class family in Sao Paulo. He moved to New York in the 1980s, when he began his career. He is best known for creating works of art out of unusual materials, and then photographing them. This exhibit features photographs of many of his most popular series, which use sugar, pasta, peanut butter and jelly, ketchup, chocolate syrup, trash, diamonds, caviar, junk, magazine scraps, pigment, old computers, flowers, toy soldiers, plastic bugs, puzzle pieces, and cotton to create amazing original portraits, as well as replicas of famous paintings and photographs.
What I love about Vik, besides his evident social conscience, is his unbelievable creative genius, the ability to take something totally inane, like ketchup, and turn it into a work of art. He also takes things that are ugly and undesirable and makes them beautiful. I also loved to see his vision, a combination of Brazilian ingenuity and American pragmatism and perfectionism. Though many of his works feature American or European themes or images, his style is undeniably Brazilian, one of unique fusion. My favorite pieces, which absolutely bowled me over, were Medusa Marinara, Mona Lisa in PB & J, Elizabeth Taylor in Diamonds, and Monet's La Japonaise in pigment. Oddly, though, the piece that most affected me was two American flags made from flowers and plants: one, green and in full bloom, the other brown and decaying. Though I'm pretty sure this wasn't his intention, it reminded me of the transition the US is undergoing, moving from despair to hope, from decadence to prosperity.
My only complaint about the exhibit was the organization, which didn't allow for a smooth or clear viewing order. Eli's complaint was that one of the chocolate syrup pieces, a two-set replica of The Raft of the Medusa, was ordered incorrectly. The museum employees on hand insisted the photos were in the correct order, but he's determined they're backwards. It was one of the least clearly drawn pieces in the exhibit, so I couldn't really tell.
The exhibit runs through March 8th at MAM Rio, but you can still enjoy Vik's work even if you're not in Rio. He has exhibits currently running in New York and Japan, and the Rio exhibit is moving to Sao Paulo in March. You can check out tons of Vik's works on his website and read about his career. For more information on the exhibit, see the MAM site.
Eli and I went to Brazil Design Week at the Museum of Modern Art recently. It was mainly a trade show for Brazil's top design firms, but there were lots of cool products to oogle, too.
My favorite product was remote-controlled hot tub, with a dozen different scent options.
I was also a fan of the many cool stools and chairs. Some even lit up.
But one of the coolest things wasn't on display; a pair of gauchas (girls from the south) brought their trusty mate cup and thermos in a special mate holder:
