Wasteland

Brooklyn based artist Vik Muniz grew up poor in Brazil. This film follows him as he returns to Rio de Janeiro, specifically to Jardim Gramacho, or "Garbage Garden." The world's largest landfill, it receives 7,000 tons daily, an astonishing 70% of all Rio's garbage. "We are not pickers of garbage; we are pickers of recyclable materials," says Tião, a catadore, or trash picker who thinks of himself and his fellows as environmentalists. The pickers have a union, which has built a recycling center, medical clinic, day care and skills-training centers, and community lending library of discarded books for their members. Muniz photographs a number of the pickers, reworks the photographs with garbage, and auctions several in London. Believing in the transformative power of art, Muniz donates the proceeds to the pickers who posed, in recognition of their lives, in honor of the dignity of their work.