Waste Land

I'm gonna play movie critic for a bit.

It might be hard because I saw this movie last night that was inspirational...and went I get inspired it's hard to find fault.

It's been a while since I've seen a foreign film of any kind, let alone a foreign documentary.  My friend Jenny Olson, who served an LDS mission in Brazil, invited me to come with a group and watch one at the National Archives.

I'm so glad she did.

The documentary is called "Waste Land."  It follows Brazilian native and artist Vik Muniz, who had been living in New York City for many years, as he leaves his home to try and create positive change in someone's life.  Specifically, he travels to Rio de Janeiro.  In Rio, he and a colleague go to Jardim Gramacho: the world's largest garbage dump.

While in the dump, he meets a few people that refer to themselves as "pickers."  Their job is to sift through load after dump truck load of trash for recyclables; they then take the recyclables to merchants who are in need of cardboard or aluminum or whatever it may be.

Let me tell you how much trash we're talking about.  Have you ever walked across a sand dune?  If you have, you'll know that when you walk on a steep portion of the dune, the sand gives readily and "avalanches" down the dune.  Imagine that sand dune is made of garbage.  It's high, and as people walk across it, garbage tumbles and gathers more garbage.  You'd see a person jumping from the top of the garbage to a slightly lower area and then they'd jump again, and again, up to 6 times till they were at the bottom, which in and of itself is mostly garbage.

As mentioned, Vik is an artist on a mission.  He starts his mission by speaking with a few of the pickers at Jardim Gamacho.  These pickers (read about them) amazed me.  They were down to earth.  They were not ashamed of picking through garbage.  They were brilliant.  They were incredibly funny.  I was most amazed by the women; though they had fallen on hard times, they refused to become another drug trafficker or prostitute, even though the opportunity was abundant.  To them, they earned every cent of their pay with dignity.

Humbling.

Vik takes pictures of them and brings them into a local art studio.  He makes projections of the pictures so that they show along the floor of the studio.  The team takes small, recyclable materials and places them along the shaded portions of the projection.  In the empty space they put larger recyclables (tupperware, toys, etc.) so that it appeared to be a colored mosaic.  Obviously it takes a lot of time and direction to do this, but each of the pickers who served as subjects of the art project are overjoyed when they see the results.

What is particularly interesting to me is that even being away from the dump for a few hours had an effect on the pickers.  Upon simply working in a new location, a few of the workers lose any desire to return to the dump.

Vik and Tiao (the president of the pickers) go to London to present the artwork.  Tiao has basically spent his whole life in the dump, so few can imagine the feeling of being in a foreign city for the first time AND going to a high caliber art show AND worrying that the art that you helped produce wasn't going to sell.

Well, it sold.  And it sold well.

This documentary made me think upon the privileges I've been given.  It strengthened the belief that no matter what cards life deals, I CAN keep my moral standards.  It is very interesting that I saw this at a time when I am trying to decide what will fulfill me the most.