Dreamland (Draumalandið) (Directors: Þhorfinnur Guðnason and Andri Snær Magnasson): My wife and I had the very good fortune to visit Iceland in September 2008, mere days before the collapse of their banking system. Since we were there partially to cover the Reykjavik International Film Festival, we were invited to a reception by the wonderful people at the Icelandic Film Centre where we saw clips of films in progress and were able to meet the directors. One of the most interesting projects we saw was Dreamland, based on the best-selling (at least in Iceland) book by Andri Snær Magnasson. I was able to speak to him that day and looking back, his sense of urgency as he warned of the short-sightedness of Iceland’s politicians was eerily prescient. The ensuing economic collapse has had ramifications around the world. So you can imagine how eager I was to finally see the finished film. Unfortunately, my high expectations were not to be met.
Dreamland starts out well enough, giving a quick primer on recent Icelandic history since achieving independence from Denmark in 1918. Founded to be resolutely neutral, it didn’t take long to become a cog in the Cold War shortly after World War 2. The government allowed the US military to build a base at Keflavik, and that base provided 2,000 jobs until it was closed in 2006. In a nation of just 300,000, this was a major economic blow, and so Iceland’s leaders went looking for a quick fix. With an abundance of clean geo-thermal energy, they decided to offer the surplus to the aluminum industry. Aluminum smelting is one of the most energy-intensive and environmentally-unfriendly processes in the resource business, but Iceland’s leaders figured that it would all happen in sparsely populated areas. Apart from the environmental effects, though, Magnasson argues that this kind of megaproject actually harms the Icelandic economy in the long run. He’s turned out to be right.
I’m sure in his book, all of this is laid out and argued in a coherent fashion. The same cannot be said for the film. Early on, we’re warned ominously by experts that politicians often use fear to control the electorate. Iceland’s politicians warned that if they didn’t build these megaprojects, the economy would not grow and that jobs might disappear forever. However, Dreamland stoops to the same fear tactics to make its case, and the irony seems lost on the filmmakers. Ominous music accompanies aggressive helicopter flyovers of unspoiled landscapes, and these shots are used over and over and over. Half of the talking head interviews are with Magnasson, who is only identified as “Writer” and not as co-director of the film nor as author of the book on which the film is based. The other interviews are unhelpful, with some subjects seeming to jump from one side of the argument to the other later in the film. Magnasson also presents a few too many shots of farmers and their families who will be affected by the aluminum plants. One or two farmers would have made his point.
The overall effect is that his few valid points are lost as the film becomes a heavy-handed and mind-numbing polemic. One clumsily-edited sequence attempts to equate the environmental damage of extracting bauxite (aluminum’s raw material) in India with smelting aluminum in Iceland, when the two processes are completely different.
I bought a copy of his book in English when I was in Iceland in 2008, and I’m looking forward to reading it, now mainly to see how a respected and intelligent journalist could turn it into such a jumbled mess of a film.
Official site of the film
(6/10)
Tagged as:
#hotdocs10,
environment,
iceland
Waste Land (Director: Lucy Walker): Last summer in Toronto we had a garbage strike, and after a few weeks garbage began being piled up in outdoor skating rinks and other city property. Suddenly our trash wasn’t something we could throw away and forget about; we were living next to it, and it stunk. I sincerely hoped that when the strike was settled, people wouldn’t forget the images and the smells, and that it might lead to a more thoughtful approach to recycling, composting and other ways of reducing the amount of stuff we toss away. I’m sad to say that the citizens of our city went right back to our old ways, but it’s always good to be reminded about our garbage. Lucy Walker’s film does that and a whole lot more.
Brooklyn-based but Brazilian-born artist Vik Muniz grew up poor on the streets of Sao Paolo. Now successful beyond his wildest dreams, he decides that he wants to give something back to the poor of his homeland. Always an innovator in using interesting materials in his art, he becomes interested in the Jardim Gramacho, Rio de Janeiro’s (and indeed the world’s) largest landfill. At this massive facility, “pickers” are paid to extract recyclable materials from the enormous mountains of trash. Like worker ants, they swarm over each new load of garbage as it is dumped. There are 3,000 of these pickers, and they are represented by an association, headed by the charismatic Tiao. We meet Tiao along with a whole group of pickers who will become participants in Muniz’s most ambitious project to date. He will use garbage to construct large-scale portraits of some of the pickers, posed as if they were in classic paintings.
Along the way, we discover that the pickers have a rich subculture, and while some are proud of their work, others long to leave the dump. Many were part of lower-middle-class families until unexpected tragedies forced them into a life of scavenging. Many have worked at the landfill since they were children, and they claim with dignity that they do honest work, and that is better than selling drugs or prostituting themselves like so many other poor Brazilians.
As the pickers collaborate with Muniz on the huge mosaics, he tells them of his plan to sell photographic prints and return all the money to them. But quite apart from the money, the opportunity to use the materials they work with every day to create art has a profound effect on them. Some find new dignity in what they do, while others gain the confidence to leave picking to try something else. While I was slightly ambivalent about Muniz using these people as material for his work, Walker wisely includes a scene where he and his wife and colleagues argue about just this topic. In the end, he feels that doing anything is better than doing nothing, and I tend to agree.
One of the very beautiful themes of the film is that art is transformative. Muniz talks about that moment when the raw materials (paint, sand, even garbage) is transformed into something different. When we look at a painting, for instance, we move closer and further from the canvas to observe this effect, and with Muniz’ giant trash mosaics, the effect is even more pronounced. But quite apart from the literal meaning, we can see that the raw materials of these pickers’ lives are being transformed by this process into something even more beautiful than paintings.
Reminiscent of Born Into Brothels, Waste Land will hopefully have just as profound an effect on the lives of at least a few of its participants.
Official site of the film
Here is the Q&A with director Lucy Walker and producer Angus Aynsley from after the screening, conducted by Hot Docs Director of Programming Sean Farnel:
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Duration: 21:21
(9/10)
Tagged as:
#hotdocs10,
art,
environment,
poverty
Gasland (Director: Josh Fox): When director Josh Fox receives a letter from a gas company offering him $100,000 to drill on his property, he’s sorely tempted. Until he starts hearing stories about combustible tap water and unexplained health problems from others who have allowed the natural gas industry to exploit their land. Setting out on a personal quest to find answers, Fox travels from his home in rural Pennsylvania to Colorado, New Mexico, Texas and Louisiana to see the results in places where this sort of drilling, called hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”) has been going on for years.
The natural gas industry is, pardon the pun, on fire. Touting a virtual ocean of natural gas under US soil, gas companies have been aggressively drilling wells in order to exploit this energy source as quickly and as profitably as possible. In a bid to become independent of foreign oil, politicians have acquiesced to the industry’s lobbyists at almost every step. The Energy Policy Act of 2005, proposed by then-Vice President Cheney, exempted the oil and gas industry from numerous pieces of environmental legislation including the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. Since that time, fracking has proceeded virtually unregulated, and Fox’s travelogue shows just how ubiquitous natural gas wells have become.
Despite admitting to being the son of liberal hippie parents, Fox is smart enough not to come across as a spoiled rich kid from the East coast. His confessional style and banjo playing endear him to both the audience and to the people he visits in the film. These people, for the most part, are average rural Americans, solid Republicans who likely voted in the very same people who gave corporations the right to drill on their land. I’d dearly love to show this film to some of the current Tea Party activists who are campaigning for even less government in their lives. Why aren’t those people picketing outside the offices of EnCana or Chesapeake Energy?
Fox does a good job of explaining the process of fracking in layman’s terms and perhaps the most shocking thing about the process is just how much water it uses. Each well drilled consumes 1–7 million gallons of fresh water, which is mixed with chemicals and injected into the earth’s crust to free up the gas. We’re literally sacrificing one scarce commodity to obtain another. To make matters worse (or better, depending on your perspective), when the residents’ drinking water is contaminated, they’re forced to buy water from somewhere else. Privatization of resources is a capitalist’s dream come true, unless of course you actually live in any of these places. And as the film’s graphics show, a huge portion of the United States is either being drilled now or will be in the near future. The gas companies began in the sparsely-populated western states, but are now moving east. Fox’s home is in an area of the Delaware River basin that provides fresh water to New York City, and drilling may jeopardize the water supply of more than 15 million people.
And even if you’re lucky enough not to live close to a drilling operation, some of these contaminants have now entered the food supply, as one rancher sadly relates. Farms and ranches depend on water to irrigate their crops and feed their animals, and even if the humans can afford to purchase clean water for themselves, they often can’t afford enough to take care of the needs of their businesses. So we’re all at risk. Even sadder was the revelation that the Bush government approved drilling on public land. So now even a visit to land under the “protection” of the Bureau of Land Management is likely to be spoiled by unsightly gas wells at best, and polluted air, soil, and water at worst.
Luckily, the film strikes just the right tone, and there is enough humour and banjo music to avoid making this a completely depressing experience. But Gasland still delivers an urgent message, and it’s one that we ignore at our own peril.
Official site of the film
(8/10)
Tagged as:
#hotdocs10,
environment
The Age of Stupid (Director: Franny Armstrong): I’ve been following the story of this film for more than a year now and was glad to finally be able to see it last night at the Canadian premiere. The Age of Stupid is unique because the creators have used the Internet to crowdfund the making of the film, and they’re doing the same thing to distribute and promote it. This Huffington Post article applauds the filmmakers for engaging with the audience directly and using social media tools to accomplish a lot on a limited budget. Even if they film was simply mediocre, the amount of work they’ve put into spreading the word will contain lessons for many filmmakers trying to get their films seen without the backing of a major studio. Luckily, the film is far from mediocre.
Essentially an environmental documentary, what sets The Age of Stupid apart is its clever framing device and brilliant editing. Pete Postlethwaite stars as the archivist, a lone figure watching over a collection of the earth’s greatest treasures in a building high above the Arctic sea. The year is 2055 and he’s looking back at video evidence of the environmental degradation that we could have avoided. As he accesses and moves clips around his screen, he wonders mournfully why we didn’t do anything to avoid this catastrophe. In this way, director Franny Armstrong can show us several different documentary threads within a (science) fictional framework. The editing is slick and the way in which some of the segments are ordered makes for a powerful and thought-provoking viewing experience.
For instance, one of the threads follows Indian entrepreneur Jeh Wadia as he attempts to launch a low-cost airline in India. He sees his mission as beneficial, allowing all Indians access to cheap air travel. But in some of the other segments, we learn that the greatest contributor to greenhouse gases is air travel. It’s going to be very difficult to convince people in the developing world to give up things that we have taken for granted for many years. Another affecting story is that of French mountain guide Fernand Pereau, who has watched the glaciers in the French Alps melt over the past fifty years. His mournful 82-year-old face has seen a lot of “progress” and as he says, we know quite well how to profit from the earth, but not to protect it.
Even those who are working for change are coming up against obstacles. Piers Guy is working to expand the use of wind power turbines in the UK, but he faces opposition everywhere from people who don’t want the turbines to “spoil the view.” His frustration is palpable and is being played out all over the world. In fact, the film itself doesn’t really offer a lot of solutions, but it does do a good job of expressing the all-encompassing nature of the problem. Luckily, the filmmakers have partnered with many organizations who are working for change, and have established another website, NotStupid.org which will serve as a constantly evolving resource for action.
The film also uses animation to take on such wide-ranging topics as resource wars and consumerism. I can see this being a must-see for students, and much less dry than An Inconvenient Truth. Even the title hints at the ample humour in the film, even if it is just to reiterate how stupid our behaviour has been. I’m also impressed that the filmmakers have made a huge effort to have the film shown in every country in the world. In fact, the Global Premiere is taking place over two days, September 21st and 22nd. This guarantees worldwide media coverage and might even help the issue of climate change reach critical mass in the collective consciousness of the humans on an ailing Planet Earth.
Note: Last night’s Canadian premiere was sponsored by the Climate Action Network who recommended that people sign the petition at KyotoPlus.ca. Another good resource is tck tck tck. The film will have its first public screening in Toronto on Saturday October 3rd at 6:30 at the Royal Cinema as part of the inaugural M.U.C.K. (Movies of Uncommon Knowledge) Film Festival.
Official site of the film
(9/10)
Tagged as:
climatechange,
environment
Editor’s Note:
Doc Soup is a monthly documentary screening programme run by the good folks at
Hot Docs. It gives audiences in Toronto (and now Calgary and Vancouver!) their regular doc fix each year from the fall through to the spring, leading up to the Hot Docs festival itself.
Recipes for Disaster (Katastrofin Aineksia) (Director: John Webster): Anglo-Finn director John Webster decides to put his family (wife and two young sons) on a strict oil diet for a year and to film the results. Ignore the standard archival footage and serious voiceover about the problems of climate change; the most interesting thing about this film is definitely the family dynamics. Webster’s wife is a reluctant participant and avoids telling her work colleagues about the experiment, not wanting to draw attention to her family. She also calls out Webster for his self-righteousness several times, at one point sarcastically calling him “a real Jesus.”
And it’s a valid point. After Webster bans all oil products, including plastic, from his family’s life, things become very difficult indeed. They try to make their own toothpaste, with predictably dire results. They are forced to buy industrial rolls of toilet paper to avoid plastic packaging. It’s not enough for Webster, who decides they need to throw out nearly every plastic item in their house. In short, his obsession makes him less and less sympathetic as the film progresses. In the eyes of his family, especially his wife, he becomes well-nigh insufferable.
Luckily, by the end of the film, he’s recognized the ridiculousness of his behaviour, while still acknowledging the importance of his crusade. After the year is up, the family continue with a modified form of their diet, while still allowing certain items such as toothpaste. Webster had replaced his car with one that had been modified to run on biodiesel, and he continues to drive that. He buys his electricity from a green source, and equips his cottage with solar panels. All in all, he recognizes that he cannot change the world all by himself. In fact, he can’t even change his family without some compromise. But the film provides an entertaining lesson in what can actually be done, and it makes its points with self-deprecating humour.
Normally, Doc Soup screenings are accompanied by a Q&A with the director present. Since it would go against the director’s principles to fly from Finland to Toronto just to answer questions, he spoke to the audience via Skype videochat. This worked remarkably well, and showed that he was still attempting to live up to the lofty goals with which he began, to reduce his family’s carbon footprint.
Official site of the film
(7/10)
Tagged as:
climatechange,
environment,
family,
finland
