Waste Land is a 2010 documentary directed by Lucy Walker, João Jardim and Karen Harley. The film documents two years of work of Brazilian contemporary modern artist Vik Muniz in creating art with the cooperation of scavengers of recyclables working at Jardim Gramacho, one of the world’s largest landfills, serving the metropolis of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.
Together with people employed to pick out recyclable material from garbage, Muniz creates from actual landfill trash large-scale mosaic portraits that are sold at art auctions in London and exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in São Paulo.
The film portrays the lives of the garbage pickers and their working conditions as well as Muniz’s efforts to help them to gain recognition and better living conditions.
“That a beautiful film could be set in the world’s largest garbage dump sounds like an oxymoron, but acclaimed documentarian Lucy Walker has pulled off precisely that feat in her profoundly moving “Waste Land.” She follows renowned Brooklyn-based, Brazilian-born artist Vik Muniz on a singularly ambitious project: going to Jardim Gramacho, a vast landfill established in 1970 north of Rio de Janeiro, photographing its catadores, pickers of recyclable materials, and then collaborating with them in transforming these photos into portraits created with recyclable materials. His purpose is to inspire his pickers to see themselves in a new way and even to re-imagine their lives”
- Los Angeles Times