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Thursday April 22, 2010
Posted by: Sean Compton

Waste Land Documentary Feature:

Directed by: Lucy Walker
Winner of Jury prize Best Feature length Documentary: Dallas International Film Festival, Winner of Audience Award at Sundance.

Reviewed By: Roy Calhoun

"I give this movie 5 Rs out of 5." (R: Rick Vanderslice and Roy)

Waste Land is everything you want in a superb documentary, it takes us someplace we have never been before, it educates and entertains at the same time, and most importantly it celebrates the best aspects of humanity. This documentary is about Brazilian artist Vic Muniz, who is from a lower middle class family in Sao Paulo. He came to America as a young man, and started working as a bag boy at a grocery store.

He literally started on the low rung in America, working for a grocery store gathering shopping carts, and shoveling garbage into the containers from the store. This garbage was everything imaginable from paper to the bloody remnants from the meat department.

This early career shaped Vic Muniz as an artist, where he uses food or garbage to create portraits or pictures, that he would then photograph, to create the most amazing images, that make you look twice, to see what you are really looking at. By using things from sugar to syrup to all sorts of garbage, he creates images that are not what you think they are. His work is now world famous and he is one of the most celebrated artists of his generation.

Vic Muniz is an amazing artist with a sense of humor and a bubbling kind of joy that is just contagious. I think one reason this Documentary works so well is Muniz is a constant delight to watch with his lust for life and his desire to give back to the country of his birth Brazil.

This is the premise of Waste Land, Vic Muniz an established successful artist decides to do his next artistic project in Brazil, he decides on going to the largest landfill, literally in the world, on the outskirts of Rio De Janeiro. This landfill at the end of the edges of Rio de Janeiro is also a place where the poorest of the poor work and live to pick out recyclables to sell to make a living.. They are known as Catadores or pluckers.

The two year project that Vic Muniz and his assistant Fabio take on is to take these pluckers, and create art from the landfill and at the same time bring attention to this particular group of poor people, and also help them by selling the art he makes and giving it all back to these workers So he not only shows their plight, but helps them at the same time.

We are introduced to a handful of the pluckers. What I think is amazing about these people is even in this job and place, they attack what they do with joy, humor, and a sense of brotherhood. These Catadores are unionized and have literally created rights for themselves in Rio De Janeiro, they have taken the money they have earned and actually built recycling plants themselves.

He picks a group of the pluckers and takes pictures of them. He takes these pictures of these people posed as characters from famous paintings. He then has this group help him create giant collages of the pictures he has taken of each person. He uses garbage from the landfill to make these giant collages. He as I mentions uses the actual pluckers in the process of creating the art. They actually become not just the subjects, but participants in the creative process.

As the documentary progresses we get to see the transformative power this project has on the pluckers. They begin to see the world a different way, through the power of art. It creates the ability for several of the people to actually see possibilities in themselves, they had never realized before. This catharsis of these Catadores as well as the affect it has upon Vic Muniz, is what makes this documentary absolutely dazzling.

He creates these beautiful collages made from literal garbage, and photographs them to create the most incredible images. They not only capture the innate beauty of the pluckers, but the spirit of their blood, seat, and tears.

He keeps to his word and auctions off one of the art pieces at a London auction house and makes $50,000, which he then turns around and gives to the head of the Catadores union. He takes him and the painting of him to London, so we get to see him see a whole other world, and see the power of art and he is literally in tears as the picture of him sells for so much money. He is overwhelmed, just as we are as viewers.

The film goes back to Rio De Janeiro, after Vic Muniz finishes his two year project. He hand delivers portraits to all the pluckers he photographed, and we get to see how each person has been affected by the participation in his project. Like in real life of course not everyone is positively affected. But many are changed profoundly. The thing about seeing these people again, I find I have actually become attached to each one of the participants, and am interested in knowing how they are now doing.

This documentary is a stunning example of what just one person, Vic Muniz, can do to affect our world. This movie is not just a celebration about the power, of art to transform people, but it also the story of an incredible culture of the Brazilian people, and their joyful outlook on life even under the most difficult challenges they face daily. Vic Muniz spends two years of his life to give back to a country of his birth. He uses his good fortune to help those less fortunate, not by charity but by getting these people involved in active participation in process of creating art. He goes to the largest landfill in the world and he takes the garbage and all the disposable people and changes them forever.

He literally takes trash and turns it into treasure, before our very eyes.

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Tuesday April 20, 2010
Posted by: Sean Compton

Learning From Light:
                   The vision of I.M. Pei

Directed by: Bo London

Reviewed by: Roy Calhoun

This a Documentary about the building of The Museum of Islamic  Art in Doha, Qatar by I.M. Pei.  First I have to admit I didn’t know where Qatar, was located in the Middle East. It is located between Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, on the Persian Gulf.  Doha, is similar to Dubai, it is a city that has literally grown out of the desert in just the last thirty years.

It has skyscrapers, and modern architecture, and now a Museum that is being dubbed the Louvre of the Middle East designed by I.M. Pei.  This documentary directed by Bo London explores the process that I.M. Pei went through in order to design this Islamic Museum.

I.M. Pei is a famous architect, who is well represented in Dallas, Texas with the Myerson Symphony Hall, and the Dallas City Hall just to name two. He is a prolific architect who has built incredible buildings, literally all over the world.

He is of Chinese birth, but educated in America, and has spent a large portion of his now 94 years living in America.  He started the Qatar project at age 89.  It took four years to complete.  It was a daunting project for any architect, but especially for someone of his advanced age. That alone is a fascinating aspect of this documentary, how he took on this astounding challenge in area of architecture that he had virtually no knowledge about.

The documentary explores all the research of Islamic Architecture he had to do before he could even begin the design process for the Museum.  He had to travel all from Spain to the Middle East to discover the roots of true Islamic architecture.

The ironic, aspect of this process for I.M. Pei, is here is a prolific architect who is of Eastern heritage, with much knowledge of Western architecture and culture, but had little knowledge of the Middle East and it’s Islamic architecture traditions or culture.

This documentary is an excellent, beautifully filmed piece, that isn’t just about architecture, and the process that an architect goes through to create his art, but also about another culture, that so many of us in the Western world know so little about. It is a very relevant topic at this time in world history, as we are dealing with two wars in the Middle East, the bombings of 9/11, and of course the ongoing tension between Israel and Palestine.  So this documentary gives us an opportunity not only to learn about I.M Pei and his process, but also about the Islamic world and it’s very unique heritage, culture, and architecture. The Islamic world stands apart it seems so much from the Western World especially, in it’s religion and culture.

We watch as I.M. Pei travels the world to study Islamic architecture to see what defines this unique style of building.

He starts with the famous ornate Islamic architecture to be found in Alhambra and Cordoba, Spain. Which represents Islamic architecture at it’s most opulent and ornate.

He then travels to other parts of the Middle East including Cairo, where there is really more of a starting point of Islamic architecture.  This beginning of Islamic architecture is really what inspires I.M. Pei the most, because it really distills Islamic architecture down to its’ very foundation.

From this early source of Islamic architecture is ultimately where I.M. Pei finds his inspiration for the designs he will ultimately do for the new Museum.

What I found fascinating, about this documentary was it educated me, about the Islamic world and its’ rich heritage, of art, culture, and religion.  I think like so many Westerners we have so very little information of this geographic part of our world, much less its’ history or art.

The documentary does an excellent job of bringing out the process of creation from I.M. Pei and the history of the Islamic world, and also just the tenacity of someone at the age of 89 who is not adverse to taking on this huge project, with much risk, and much research.

I enjoyed this documentary, and would certainly recommend it to anyone who is either an architecture lover, or just for anyone who wants to learn more about the rich history, and culture of the Islamic world.
This documentary is probably headed to PBS or Discovery Channel, it does not have the feel of a theatrical documentary, it is elegantly filmed, but leans toward the dry, though never dull side of an educational and informative documentary.

It has a beautiful score by Yo Yo Ma and The Silk Road Project.

I will say it did what I think all good documentaries do, it took me some place I had never been before and it informed and educated me, at the same time. That is a successful documentary in my opinion. So keep an eye out for Learning from the Light:  The Vision of I.M. Pei.

You will learn, and enjoy things about a culture, that is rich in art, architecture, and a deep Islamic faith.  Ultimately, this film is also inspirational, watching I.M Pei at the age of 89, not afraid to learn something new and take on this huge daunting project, and create such beauty in the process. That alone is worth the time it will take to watch this elegant, informative documentary.

 

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