6.25.2007

FILM: Manufactured Landscapes


Filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal and the renowned photographer, Edward Burtynsky, present Manufactured Landscapes. Like the film, Baraka, Manufactured Landscapes presents Burtynsky's large-scale images of industrial (manufactured) landscapes in a repetitive form to initiate a rather uncanny dialogue with humanity and our impact on the environment.
I haven't seen the film, but I plan on going soon...I've always been shock & awed by Burtynsky's photography....sometimes his monotonous images of tower blocks remind me of Jean-Luc Godard's "2 or 3 Things I Know About Her". There is this famous scene where the camera pans, literally engulfs and suffocates 360 degrees around the female protagonist, Juliette, as she stands in her housing project corridor. It's just such a provocative demonstration (a shocking visual narrative) of how confined Juliette is in her 1960's tower block outside Paris. The tragedy and violence of modernist housing projects may be broken record criticism, but then I think of riots occurring in Paris these days, in the same sort of suburb-banlieue, and I wonder what change has been made...


1 comment:

radioisfree said...

i KNOW i've seen this movie, but sadly the details have left the building. it obviously struck a major-chord with you, cerre, so i will definitely re-investigate. your blog continues to inspire and titilate and apparently has a large following. aren't the internet (in general) anb blogging (specifically) amazing?! much luck to you and your bi-coastiality. i, sadly, live on what some call "the third coast," but i don't really like brown water.