Film Screening: Manufactured Landscapes

Jennifer Baichwal’s film, “Manufactured Landscapes”involves the photographs and videos of photographer Edward Burtynsky’s trip through landscapes that have been altered by large-scale human activity, captured with Super-16mm film.

While some would some call the work beautiful, his main goal was to challenge notions while raising questions about the interplay of environmental ethics and aesthetics. The footage was compiled from a trip to China where Burtynsky visited factories which Western society has come to rely on for most of its appliances, including a factory that produces most of the world’s supply of clothes irons and mobile phones, which is one kilometer in length and employs 23,000 workers.

Unlike most documentaries, there is very little commentary, which allows viewers to take in the images and try to make sense of what they’re seeing, while at the same time the film “tries to shift our consciousness about the world and the way we live in it”.

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