Our thinking is changing, as the world is changing. The speed with which this is happening is astonishing, but only to those who have lived for more than 30 years ;-) For everyone else, this speed of change is normal, as they've grown up with this pace of change. And we're getting quite good at describing interrelated issues that are starting to affect us.

To aid this discovery phase, and in the ongoing spirit of putting face on things, I would like to share a preview of Jennifer Baichwal's forthcoming feature documentary Manufactured Landscapes, which follows the world and work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky:

"Burtynsky makes large-scale photographs of 'manufactured landscapes' -- quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines, dams. He photographs civilization's materials and debris, but in a way people describe as "stunning" or "beautiful," and so raises all kinds of questions about ethics and aesthetics without trying to easily answer them.

 

The film follows Burtynsky to China as he travels the country photographing the evidence and effects of that country's massive industrial revolution. Sites such as the Three Gorges Dam, which is bigger by 50% than any other dam in the world and displaced over a million people, factory floors over a kilometre long, and the breathtaking scale of Shanghai's urban renewal are subjects for his lens and our motion picture camera.

 

Shot in Super-16mm film, Manufactured Landscapes extends the narrative streams of Burtynsky's photographs, allowing us to meditate on our profound impact on the planet and witness both the epicentres of industrial endeavour and the dumping grounds of its waste. What makes the photographs so powerful is his refusal in them to be didactic. We are all implicated here, they tell us: there are no easy answers. The film continues this approach of presenting complexity, without trying to reach simplistic judgements or reductive resolutions. In the process, it tries to shift our consciousness about the world and the way we live in it."

Here's the trailer to this stunning documentary. Can't wait till June (2007) to go and see this in New York. For play dates in your neighborhood, click here.