Trio of Edward Burtynsky films streams at VIFF as part of Capture Photography Festival, April 9 to May 6
In Jennifer Baichwal’s documentaries Manufactured Landscapes, Watermark, and Anthropocene, photographer’s images find terrible beauty in environmental destruction
An Edward Burtynsky aerial photograph from Watermark, directed by Jennifer Baichwal.
Capture Photography Festival and VIFF present Manufactured Landscapes, Watermark, and Anthropocene: The Human Epoch from April 9 to May 6.
IT’S HARD TO believe it was 15 years ago that we first saw the starting tracking shot that opened director Jennifer Baichwal’s Manufactured Landscapes.
The now famous, mindboggling scene spends eight uniterrupted minutes passing by the hundreds of workbenches that cover kilometers of floorspace in China’s Factory of the World. It’s a disorienting and stunning encapsulation of the speed and scale of industrialization in China.
The shot introduces a movie—and a trilogy of films—that alternately shock and mesmerize viewers. All three are on view in a special package marking the 15th anniversary of the first documentary in the series.
With Manufactured Landscapes, Baichwal coined a new kind of unsettling visual essay, following famed Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky as he visited and lensed not just city-sized factories, but apocalyptic coal mines, ship graveyards, slag heaps, and e-waste dumps around the globe.
Eight years later, Burtynsky reteamed with Baichwal, stepping in to codirect the equally visually arresting Watermark—complete with its own awesome and curiosity-provoking opening shot, which turns out to be the gushing water of China’s colossal Xiaolangdi Dam.
But it's the last in these three-part series of collaborations, 2019’s Anthropocene: The Human Epoch, that ranks as the most disturbing—Burtynsky and Baichwal capturing landscapes that have been destroyed in even more alarming and surreal ways. As Kenyan officials burn mountains of illegal ivory, bulldozers rip apart Italian quarries, and green-glowing lithium pools form in Chile, things start to resemble a sci-fi nightmare, if not Biblical end times. Alicia Vikander is on hand this time to underline the urgency through narration, citing distressing stats on deforestation, extinction, and air quality.
You can watch all three for 10 bucks as part of the Capture Photography Festival Film Pack. Make sure you can stream to the biggest screen in your house to see Burtynsky's mesmerizing shots in all their horrifying beauty.
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