“Manufactured Landscapes” isn’t the typical Salem Progressive Film Series flick.
There’s no advocate with an axe to grind, no doddering grandparent doing it “for the children,” no thinly-veiled David and Goliath metaphors. It’s almost jarring how different it is from what audiences might expect from the series. “Manufactured Landscapes” is, first and foremost, an art film.
The documentary follows photographer Edward Burtynsky on a trip to China as he captures scenes of the country’s ongoing industrial revolution. Burtynsky has made a career of photographing places where humankind has changed the natural landscape in pursuit of progress, previous subject matter for the artist has included massive quarries.
“Manufactured Landscapes” is shown Thursday, March 11, at the Grand Theater, 191 High Street NE, and director Jennifer Baichwal takes questions via Skype after the screening.
In China, Burtynsky and the documentary place emphasis on the edges of consumption cycles from the factory line worker churning out 400 breaker switches in a day to the village that recycles the West’s cast-off consumables and imports drinking water because the local water table is polluted with heavy metals.
“The challenge is that China’s industrial revolution is occurring because of the products we use and throw away every day and the images we captured had to reflect back on us,” Baichwal said.
The opening 8-minute tracking shot slowly reveals a vast factory and the numerous people assembling the products that are shipped all over the world.
“We tried to take cues from Burtynsky’s photographs as we shot the film,” Baichwal said. “The beauty and complexity of his work is that it could just as easily be hanging in the corporate offices of a business making products as it could the office of the environmentalist working against it.”
The most powerful experiences while filming were the ones when she found herself in a “wasteland” of industrial progress without a tree or bird in sight, Baichwal said.
“Those moments made me realize how much the small changes we can make will make a difference,” she said.
Tickets to the Salem Progressive Film Series are $3 for adults, $2 for students. Doors open at 6:15 p.m. The screening begins at 7 p.m.
