Extra Credit

Waste Land Waste Land is a movie I had to watch for extra credit in my environmental class. This Movie was about an artist that wanted to make a difference in the Brazil landfills. This artist name is Vik Muniz. He is an artist that uses different materials to make art. For example, he has used diamonds, wire, string, chocolate syrup, peanut butter and other materials. He likes to make deceiving images. Vik Muniz wanted to work with people who worked in the Rio landfill. He wanted to make a difference. He wanted to make art and change people’s lives. In the movie he said he wanted to change people’s lives using the same material they worked with everyday. His focused was to work with pickers from the landfill. He worked with about six people that were pickers at the landfill. In the movie these people at the beginning they did not know what Muniz was doing and why he was filming them and wanted to know about their work and lifestyle. Most of the people he filmed did not like working as a picker at the landfill, but they had to do it for a living. They get paid twenty to twenty five dollars a day. Most people thought that their job was disgusting and that they did not want their kids working in the landfills like they do. The pickers at the landfill have to pick out the different kinds of materials from the trash and had to separate them. The women would always go for the plastic and the materials that are not so heavy for them to carry. The pickers would all agree that picking waste was not a job they wanted to do, but it provided for their familiar. Muniz photographed and filmed the pickers. He took individual pictures of the pickers and took their pictures and put them in a studio where they could see their pictures on the ground. The pickers were able to see their pictures and they put trash on the pictures. They traced their pictures with trash the materials they worked with everyday and Muniz photographed them when they were done. He put those pictures in a gallery to sell and gave the money from the pictures back to the pickers. The picker’s lives did change after they worked with Muniz. They didn’t think they could make art with trash from the landfill. It also made them be proud of their job and what they did. For some it made them have more confident and made them see that they were doing something big to save the environment. They were the ones recycling for the other people that didn’t. In the end of the movie, everyone was happy they worked with Muniz and everyone did something different with the money they receive from their photographs that were sold at the gallery. Muniz gave everyone a copy of their own photograph. Some people after the experience went through changes in their lives. One of the ladies opened a restaurant and stopped working at the landfill. Another woman also stopped working at the landfill and told all her family she worked at the landfill. At the beginning of the movie she said she was ashamed of working there, but by the end of the movie she was proud of her job. She still wanted a better job to be with her son. Another person opened a library near his home because he wanted people to be educated. In the end, most people left the landfill anyways because the landfill closed in 2012. The sad part was that many lost their jobs.