Manufactured Landscapes

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Manufactured Landscapes
Directed by Jennifer Baichwal
Produced by Nick de Pencier
Daniel Iron
Jennifer Baichwal
Starring Edward Burtynsky
Release date(s) Flag of Canada 2006
Running time 90 min
Language English
French
Official website
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Manufactured Landscapes is an award winning documentary film about the work of photographer Edward Burtynsky.

Contents

[edit] Overview

Director Jennifer Baichwal followed Edward Burtynsky on a tour of Asia as he took large-scale photographs of giant industrial landscapes around the world. The film explores Burtynksy's work through interviews in the field and in the studio, detailed images of his photographs, and live filming of his subject matter. While the film clearly serves as a commentary on the impact of large scale industrialization on our natural world, Burtynsky and the film makers were careful neither to criticize, nor praise these developments.

[edit] Subject matter

Many of Burtynsky's photographs feature stunning and sometimes beautiful landscapes of areas completely transformed by human activity, which contrasts the adverse affects these landscapes represent.

The film examines Burtynsky's photographs of:

[edit] Awards

[edit] Critical reception

As of August 19, 2007, the film had an average score of 80% on Metacritic based on 15 reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes 83% of critics had given the film a "fresh" rating based on 47 reviews (39 fresh, 8 rotten).

Lisa Schwarzbaum of Entertainment Weekly gave the film an "A" and said "The opening tracking shot through a Chinese factory where 23,000 employees make most of the world's irons is a stunner."[2] The review that appeared in the Boston Globe said the film "begs to be hung on the wall, studied, absorbed, and learned from" and also "Taken as a whole, Manufactured Landscapes is a mesmerizing work of visual oncology, a witness to a cancer that's visible only at a distance but entwined with the DNA of everything we buy and everywhere we shop." [3] Ken Fox of TV Guide gave the film four stars and said "Jennifer Baichwal's important, disquieting documentary offers the strongest reminder since Born into Brothels that art can serve a crucial, consciousness raising purpose.[4] Kenneth Baker of the San Francisco Chronicle said "the viewer soon realizes that [Baichwal] shares Burtynsky's astonishment and concern over the scale, tempo and irreversibility of postmodern humanity's global frenzy of production and consumption", and also that the film "leaves its audience with many troubling questions."[5] Michael Phillips of the Chicago Tribune praised the opening shot, but said "the rest of director Baichwal's picture feels constrained and rather dutiful, no matter how passionate these people are about what they're observing."[6]

Ella Taylor of LA Weekly named it the 2nd best film of 2007 (tying with The Host), and Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal named it the 8th best film of 2007.[7]

[edit] Previous work

Baichwal's previous film was another documentary about a noted photographer, Shelby Lee Adams, whose work was explored in the 2002 documentary The True Meaning of Pictures: Shelby Lee Adams' Appalachia. [1]

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c d www.edwardburtynsky.com. Retrieved on 2007-07-09.
  2. ^ Lisa Schwarzbaum (2007-06-20). Manufactured Landscapes. Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved on 2007-08-19.
  3. ^ An eloquent ecological warning. Boston Globe (2007-06-22). Retrieved on 2007-08-19.
  4. ^ Ken Fox. Manufactured Landscapes Review. TVGuide.com. Retrieved on 2007-08-19.
  5. ^ Kenneth Baker (2007-07-20). FILM CLIPS / Also opening today. San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved on 2007-08-19.
  6. ^ Michael Phillips (2007-07-27). Movie review: 'Manufactured Landscapes'. Chicago Tribune. Retrieved on 2007-08-19.
  7. ^ Metacritic: 2007 Film Critic Top Ten Lists. Metacritic. Retrieved on 2008-01-05.

[edit] External links

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