Waste Land Released 25 February 2011 Director Lucy Walker Starring Vik Muniz Producer(s) Angus Aynsley, Hank Levine Origin Brazil, United Kingdom Running Time 90 minutes Genre Documentary Rating TBC

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Modern art is rubbish.

"We have so much excess we turn it into art", murmurs Vik Muniz as Waste Land nears its finale. He's perusing a collections of modern art in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Sao Paulo with Tiao a worker from the Jardim Gramacho (The Rubbish Garden), a landfill outside of Rio de Janeiro that collects almost 70% of its daily refuse. And as the camera lingers over one of Damien Hirst's medicine cabinets we realise that Tiao lives a life so wholly indebted to the very practical concerns of the day to day that such obvious fripperies with no practical application must astound. Jean Michel Basquiat perhaps provides a more relatable figure and when Vik makes mention of Basquiat's background, before fame knocked sleeping rough in Washington Square Park, Tiao concedes that he can understand the work's ugliness, its haphazard nature. Contentions of modern art, its practicality, affluence, wealth and its edifying opposite aren't the only ones at stake in Waste Land, however. It also provides a glimpse into the lives of people who, like the rubbish they collect, are considered by society as not only disposable but also valueless.

An Oscar hopeful for best documentary feature this year, Waste Land begins with an idea, Vik Muniz's plan to give something back to one of the most impoverished sectors of Rio, and as director Lucy Walker follows him through his endeavour she achieves much and we, in turn, learn a lot. We learn first, perhaps most importantly, that the people of the Jardim Gramacho haven't been waiting around immobile to suddenly have their lives imbued with meaning by Vik Muniz and that many, along with their daily lot, have been working steadfastly to improve the conditions of the landfill. Like the Machiavelli quoting Tiao who organises a union of the rubbish pickers (catadores), distributing wages and holding regular protests for worker rights, or Zumbi who has created a library from books that have been thrown out over the years, or Irma who cooks large communal vats of stew from the unspoiled meats the other workers find her. In fact the examples of people striving to make the most of their means are innumerable; many of the workers have a proto-environmentalist stand, taking pride in the work they do and are quick to correct anyone that says they pick rubbish, instead they collect recyclables, reusable materials, that can be refashioned and made useful again. Others think it honourable to make ends meet with such low paid work (just $25-30 per day) rather than compromise their morality with the thoroughly more gainful enterprises of prostitution or drug dealing. "It’s not bad to be poor," an aged Valter dos Santos says "It’s bad to be rich at the height of fame with your morals a dirty shame."

We also learn of Vik Muniz's altruism, over the three years of the project, he gets to know many of the catadores, in the end picking seven with which to work, making photo portraits of them in the style of famous paintings (for example The Death of Marat) and then refashioning them with found object recyclables from the Jardim Gramacho. The finished product he hopes to sell at auction, donating the proceeds back toward the workers union. Vik as the main protagonist, though undoubtedly charitable, lending time, money and creative energy to the project, never makes his altruism seem like an act of charity. Instead he is eager, fearful, concerned, proud, sometimes wondering, as is often a main question of direct cinema, if the experience will change the documentary's subjects; what will they have when they go back to the Jardim Gramacho, will they want to leave, isn't it a good thing if they do?

Sometimes the catadores appears like ants scrambling over some huge mound of debris in a dystopian parallel world and at others the camera holds them revealingly close. They brim with dignity, intelligence, frustrations and hope. The cinematography of Passos, Miranda and Herrmann grasps it all, from the intrigue of the favela, to the heartwarming prettification of the modest home, to the many subtleties of emotion that flicker across the catadores' faces over the documentary's course.

A film in which the worlds of modern art and documentary filmmaking collide in a socially conscious frame through the lens of the landfill, Waste Land is the result of a three year collaboration between artist Vik Muniz, documentary filmmaker Lucy Walker and the citizens of the Jardim Gramacho.

- Cormac O’Brien