User reviews

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")

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!

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.

I had only heard little about 'Waste Land' and didn't know what to expect other than be introduced to some artworks by Vik Muniz. Also the concept of making art from garbage and involving the garbage pickers who work at the dumpsite got me curious. What I got from this film in the end was far more than what I expected. The camera follows Muniz to the world's largest waste land in Rio de Janeiro. One by one the viewer is introduced to some of the people who work there while Muniz proposes his project to them. The people, who are considered by many, to be of the lowest of classes, are portrayed beautifully as high spirited people, in this film. Just like any other common working human being, the pickers work hard to provide for their families and many of them are quite proud of what they do . There is also a wonderful sense of unity. What Muniz offers them is to be a part of something big, to dream again. It's a sight to behold, when the workers' faces light up as they realize they are becoming/ have become a part of something unique, beautiful and important. These are three adjectives that I'd additionally use to describe this inspiring, insightful and unique gem.

An moving documentary highlighting the transformative power of art, and the beauty of the human spirit. Top-selling contemporary artist Vik Muniz rooted in New York decides to give back to a community where he was born and raised. He travels to Jardim Gramacho, the largest landfill in the world on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. With the intention to help the pickers to improve their lives using his art, what starts as an introduction to the devastating poverty and lack of infrastructure in the slums of Rio de Janeiro, begins to transform into a story of unrelenting spirit, strength, and inspiration. Perhaps director Lucy Walker initially intended to make the film about Muniz. If so, her subject led her to a better one; as he returns to Rio to photograph pickers for a series of portraits, she begins to focus on their lives. We see where they live, we meet their families, we hear their stories, we learn of the society and economy they have constructed around Jardim Gramacho, the "Garbage Garden." 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. (Heavily debated decision and the possible ramifications.) Life is unpredictable that way. "Waste Land" is a testament that things can go from good to bad in an instant. But they can also improve just as quickly. A social documentary based around a self reliant community of people disregarded and largely ignored, who find unrealized beauty in their everyday work, modern art, and in themselves. I can never again put out my recycling bin without giving thought to how much more this film communicates than just that.

In one of the several memorable sequences in 'Waste Land' world famous artist Vik Muniz teaches his audiences about looking at art in a museum. People tend, he tells them, to get closer to the painting, then farther, then closer, then farther again, several times. When they are far away they get the overall idea of the art work. When they get close they try to understand how it is made. From far they see the idea. From close they see the matter.

The great idea of the documentary directed by Lucy Walker is to describe the process of creation in which the subjects are the Brazilian garbage pickers, called 'catadores' while the matter is the recyclable materials extracted from the huge garbage ground called 'Jardim Gramacho', which gathers most of the waste of the huge metropolis of Rio de Janeiro. However this is only the inner circle of this smart film, as the first part describes the search that triggers the project in which the artist explores the space of the big garbage dump. At first it looks like one of its work, a square on the map, getting closer men seem to be visible at the dimensions of ants, then zooming in we discover a full human landscape composed of people who may be working physically in garbage but they do it with pride and dignity and a sense of purpose of their work and its benefits for the overall good of the community. The human dimensions of the characters discovered by Muniz are best material on which relies the quality of his art and the quality of the film director Walker made about the process of creating his art.

'Waste Land' is beautifully filmed, the characters are well chosen, and one can say that garbage never looked so beautiful and full of colors and the garbage people never looked so clean and sexy as in this film. There is one more ethical question that needs to be asked about the realization of this documentary. By picking a few of the people of 'Jardim Gramacho' and making them for a few months part of the artistic creation process, Muniz, Walker and their teams took them out of the social medium they were living in and exposed them not only to art, to better work conditions, but also to the broader world living at a very different pace, social relations and living standards. Even as the money raised from the selling of the works returned to the people involved and to the social activities in the 'garbage garden' I could not ask whether the human involved will be able to get back to their previous work, or even as they use some of the cash earned for the participation in the project will they be able to overcome the short glimpse they witnessed of the world of glamor of art trade? Although Walker's documentary tried to give a rather positive answer to this question I could not avoid a slight suspicion of manipulation, or at least of a self-righteous perspective of the facts as they were presented. But maybe I am just over-concerned, or maybe Muniz and Walker are right in their approach, and the path to help the under-privileged of this world starts not with 99 or 100 of the lucky ones enrolling to help, but with the first of the 100.

It's hard to not be moved by this film. Although the film takes about an hour to get going, once the movie gets its footing you will be mesmerized by how transformative creativity can be for the soul. You want a happy ending for everyone involved, you want everyone to leave their metallic shacks to live in houses with plumbing, you want in essence a perfect world...no warts and all.

However, only Hollywood scripts give birth to such wild fantasy and this film is real and by its own measure, the happiness we see, while real, may only be fleeting.

Waste Land is an excellent film.

As a film, just a 6, but as a contribution to humanity 10/10 If most people were asked about their concept of the worst job going, I reckon working in a huge garbage dump would be among them. So it is fascinating to see how this film brings out the humanity and dignity of people working in what was at the time the world's biggest garbage dump. Two of the women make a point that what they do is more honest and dignified than prostituting themselves on the street (not to mention prostituting themselves in Congress). And that goes for the drugs trade too. So all they're basically doing is trying to get by, honestly, putting in a day's work for a day's pay. And the film shows very clearly what great dignity there is in that. By the end, for all their human frailties, one comes to respect these people and even feel great affection for them. Well done Vik for helping to give them new perspectives and opportunities - he so clearly appreciates the opportunities he was given and recognises how his life could so easily have taken a different course, if it hadn't been for a bit of good fortune and the helping hands of people who believed in us. This growing trend, especially in some supposedly religious circles, of believing that material success is entirely down to our own brilliance and a sign of God's favour is exteremely dangerous. It tramples all over the true Christian message and we need films like this one to help keep our feet on the ground.

A documentary about the international acclaimed Brazilian artist Vik Muniz, who reconstructs photos using garbage materials from Jardim Gramacho, the world's largest landfill in Rio de Janeiro, and with the help of the pickers who work and dwell there. An both artistically tantalizing and sociologically empathizing body of work.

This film has indeed reminded me that it is the one should have used the 4D gimmick which brazenly hyped by SPY KIDS: ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD IN 4D (2011). With a bit odor touch, it could enhance more on the turmoil what we are watching in the landfill, and it is an extraordinary case that the sense of smell could actually have played a more essential role in the film genre.

Anyway, the environment-concerned stress has never been under the spotlight here, being a documentary about art and garbage pickers, one possible pitfall is the condescending inclination, but blithely it is not the case for this film, instead it spends most of time on the individual pickers who are involved in making this project, it captures many poignant moments behind their own stories. No doubt, Vik's work does have a pivotal role of altering the pickers lives, but the film does not overwhelmingly hinge on the process of making those artworks, and which perfectly encapsulates a more sublimated obligation in additional to a general aesthetic percipient, to change the world in a better way, and Vik and his team has done it, a tenacious and awe-inspiring job.

Apart from the riveting story, there are several panning scenes of the landfill are astonishing, our life is linking with garbages everyday, but most of us act like they are thoroughly vanishing from the earth after when they are being discarded in the dustbins. After watching this film, we might be coerced to face some soiled corner of our life which we are selectively and subjectively ignoring, and starts with the most basic one: behave yourself.

Waste Land is the second Oscar nominated documentary i have seen in recent months that revolves around the art word . " Exit through the gift shop" is the other and while that film was more about how ridiculous the art world can be this is a movie that shows how one man and his art can changes a group of peoples lives for the better.

Although this is regarded as a feature film it's far more like a TV documentary. It's quite a positive , heartwarming movie which would normally be a positive thing but i would much prefer it if this documentary had show some balls.

Bearing in mind we are following a group of people who are working in the worlds biggest land fill sight , Director Lucy Walker fails to get across the horrors of sifting through the mountains of garbage. Instead she focuses more on the happiness of the people working there and although that's nice, it mean the film lacks bite.

The art on display is OK but nothing special and sells for stupid money by people with more cash than sense but in this case , the artist , Vik Muniz , gives it back to the people who are the subject of the pictures and thats a good thing.

Waste land is an interesting film to watch if you have a spare ninety minutes but i couldn't help wonder why this was nominated for an Oscar.

I have developed a love for films and documentaries coming out of Brazil, particularly with Elite Squad 1 and 2, films that completely blow my mind. I therefore had high hopes for this documentary, especially as it had a 7.8 on IMDb.

The documentary starts off well, that is for the first 5 minutes, then what you begin to experience is pure narcissism. The recycling story is an interesting one and the lives the pickers lead is one that could have been explored on a deeper level that would have made for a great documentary. Instead this is all about one over-inflated ego promoting himself with final products unable to live up to expectations. This documentary is only worth watching to see the pickers, the rest is a waste of time.

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.

"Waste Land" is a film that I picked up with interest. While the cover-art of the documentary caught my attention, the film itself proved to be much more complex, engaging, and fascinating, than I had originally imagined. A great documentary that captures: a time, place, and the ideology of a social group, working in the background of the ever present, cultural ideology.

Lower class lives are explored in a manner which not only illuminates the struggles that these individuals must go through, on a day to day basis, but also makes it clear that the cultural environment ; or landscape in Brazil, is changing.

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.

Waste Land is more than a documentary about garbage it is a profoundly moving exploration of art, poverty, and the resilience of the human spirit. Directed with empathy and insight by Lucy Walker, the film follows renowned Brazilian artist Vik Muniz as he embarks on an ambitious project: to collaborate with the catadores the trash pickers of Jardim Gramacho, the world's largest landfill on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro.

A rare and inspiring documentary that transcends its subject. With sensitivity and vision, the directors invite us to look again not only at the discarded materials of society, but at the people we often overlook. It's a celebration of human dignity, artistic collaboration, and the transformative power of being seen.

What begins as a conceptual art experiment gradually evolves into something much deeper: a meditation on the power of representation, self-worth, and the surprising intersections between beauty and survival.

Is a good cause an excuse to produce bad art? Not in my book. And there is even less reason to make a film about it. It's an entertaining watch, I'll give them that. Beautiful shots of a Brazilian dump teeming with pickers and scavenging birds are best viewed from the comforts of you local independent cinema. The music swells to a heartwarming crescendo when the goodhearted artist takes that poor Brazilian waste picker to London on his first journey into the first world. And the artist, being a true philanthropist, doesn't stop at showing handpicked members of the Brasilan underclass, what his flashy world is like, no he makes sure from the start that the final profits of his pictures will go straight to those poor bastards. While the lucky sod breaks down and weeps as the picture is auctioned for 28000 pounds, Vik Muniz even takes the time to give him a short introduction into modern art.

What makes this so unbearable to watch is the artist's complete lack of irony and, well shall I say humbleness, and the filmmaker can't be too keen on that either. Fairly early in the proceedings Vik and his wife sit in front of the computer screen that depicts Brasilians largest landfill and the artist announces proudly that this is where he is going to live for the next two years, while he, his wife and the audience knows pretty well that he's not going to do anything of that sort. But now we know what Lucy Walker is trying to tell us and we feel cheated. Namely that here we have a man who deeply cares about his fellow citizens, but if he really was the altruistic person that this film tries to makes us believe, he would have been more concerned about the plight of the people and less with portraying himself as this selfless do-gooder. This culminates in the scene when, towards the end - all the money came in already- the artist asks the black underdog if, at the very beginning when this crazy artist showed up on the dump, and told him about his vision of making art out of garbage, if he (the underdog) had realistically believed it would amount to anything, let alone a major show at the National Museum in Rio, the underdog is humbled into sheer awe, when in fact he should have answered: Well, as you had a full camera team with you, to document every step you did, I had an inkling that the whole thing would have an happy ending:' And maybe he even said something like that but it sure as hell got cut out for the final edit, cause although the director wants us to believe otherwise, the whole thing seems staged.

It never ceases to amaze me how people can change lives when they decide to. There are so many out there that have the capability and means to make a difference and do so. Vik is an inspiration. He remembers where he grew up and does what he can to help many who hail from the same area in Rio. Lovely, hard-working people that love their families, opportunities and lives. So many of us that struggle with daily grind and complaints need to turn to films such as these to see how fortunate we really are. I know I am, blessed indeed. I truly do care about these folks and was moved by their lives. Everyone has a story and many are not easy to hear, but they put the stories out there. No qualms, no shame. We should all be so open and realize what fortunes we do have.

Waste Land is a true classic depicting inner humane values radiating through art forms of exuberance. Vik Muniz's extraordinary artistic zeal spiced with humanity in collaboration with those true aspirations of the characters that the former portrait gives the entire plot a genuinely vibrant touch. It ignites the recycling power of our inner self as it makes us feel the universal human appeal more deeply then ever. It allows us to peep through the vibrant colorful membrane of civilization straight into the lives of those standing at the 'fundamental sphere' of d civilization super structure, coping up with life with whatever means they are provided with....living rather in their own happy times sans any involvement in petty vices of so called "modern civilized society". But still they are human...they have been unable to acquire the taste of life in fullest terms but they still possess that zeal to improvise their life style, at least into another level. Vik Muniz just provided them that platform,standing on which they can at least level up themselves with the other lot of the society. Simply a Masterpiece!!!