Manufactured Landscapes (2006)
Foundry Films

Description

The film follows Internationally acclaimed photographer Edward Burtynsky whose large-scale photographs of manufactured landscapes quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines and dams create stunningly beautiful art from civilization s materials and debris. The film follows him through China, as he shoots the evidence and effects of that country s massive industrial revolution. Burtynsky's photographs allow us to meditate on our impact on the planet and witness both the epicenters of industrial endeavor and the dumping grounds of its waste.

Collected reviews and ratings

10 TV Guide | Ken Fox

Using the work of Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky to explore the impact of China's rapid economic development on its environment, Jennifer Baichwal's important, disquieting documentary offers the strongest reminder since Born Into Brothels that art can serve a crucial, consciousness raising purpose.
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10 Entertainment Weekly | Lisa Schwarzbaum

Jennifer Baichwal's gorgeous documentary Manufactured Landscapes amplifies the powerful work of Edward Burtynsky, a Canadian artist who specializes in large-scale photographs of terrain transformed by civilization into rivers and tides of industrial ugliness.
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10 Salon.com | Andrew O'Hehir

Baichwal's film is about an artist, Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, but it's really about what Burtynsky has chosen to look at, aspects of modern life most of us choose never to see.
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9.0 Amazon user reviews

"Manufactured Landscapes" is about the work of Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, but this film is unlike any other I've seen on the subject of an artist and his work.
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8.5 DVD Verdict | Joel Pearce

It is not simply an assault on the recent changes to the world. Instead, it shows the awesome power of humanity's impact on the world, both the good and the bad. It's an art collection well worth exploring, and this film does the best job it possibly can.
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8.0 Variety | Peter Debruge

Even without the alarmist undercurrent of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth,""Manufactured Landscapes" serves as a staggering wake-up call, underscoring how far removed Western consumers are from the production of everyday objects.
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8.0 DVD Times | Anthony Nield

In making a film about Burtynsky fellow Canadian Jennifer Baichwal has a choice as to how to approach her subject; does the document the man or his work? From the opening shot – an uninterrupted eight-minute tracking shot across an immense factory shop floor in China – it is clear that she has opted for the latter.
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7.5 The Onion A.V. Club | Noel Murray

Manufactured Landscapes makes a game stab at recreating the feeling of staring at one of Burtynsky's eerily beautiful pictures, by presenting long static takes and snail-paced tracking shots, interspersed with stills of the work in question. And frankly, the subject matter is better suited to images alone, where the mysterious abstraction can stand as its own statement.
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7.0 New York Times | Manohla Dargis

As this film indicates, intentionally and not, an artist may not always be able to gauge the difference between the sublime and the abominable, but with knowledge and a will to conscience a viewer just might.
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