Manufactured Landscapes

2006 Canadian film

Manufactured Landscapes

Directed by| Jennifer Baichwal
Produced by| Nicholas de Pencier
Daniel Iron
Jennifer Baichwal
Starring| Edward Burtynsky
Cinematography| Peter Mettler
Edited by| Roland Schlimme
Music by| Dan Driscoll

Production
companies

Foundry Films
Mercury Films
National Film Board of Canada

Release date

* 9 September 2006 (2006-09-09) (Toronto International Film Festival)

Running time

| 90 minutes
Country| Canada
Languages| English
French

Manufactured Landscapes is a 2006 Canadian documentary film about the industrial landscape photography of Edward Burtynsky. It was directed by Jennifer Baichwal and is distributed by Zeitgeist Films. It was the first of three documentary collaborations between Baichwall and Burtynsky, followed by Watermark in 2013 and Anthropocene: The Human Epoch in 2018.

## Subject matter

[edit]

The film involves the photographs and videos of photographer and visual artist Ed Burtynsky's trip through landscapes that have been altered by large-scale human activity, captured with Super 16 mm film.[1] Most of the photographs featured in the film are pieces that are exhibited all over the world and are taken with a "large format field camera on large 4x5-inch sheet film and developed into high-resolution, large-dimension prints (of approximately 50x60 inches)"[2] While some would call the work beautiful, his main goal was to challenge notions while raising questions about the interplay of environmental ethics and aesthetics. The footage was compiled from a trip to China where Burtynsky visited factories which Western society has come to rely on for most of its appliances, including a factory that produces most of the world's supply of clothes irons, which is one kilometre in length and employs 23,000 workers. The film also features the Three Gorges Dam, which, along with being the largest dam in the world, has uprooted more than one million people and flooded 13 cities, 140 towns and 1350 villages since the beginning of its construction in 1994.[3] Unlike most documentaries, there is very little commentary, which allows viewers to take in the images and try to make sense of what they're seeing, while at the same time the film "tries to shift our consciousness about the world and the way we live in it".[1]

Jennifer Baichwal elaborated on the film's minimal commentary and its connection to the film's overall message in a Q&A with Film Forum, noting that "...if the film was didactic it would imply an easy answer . . ."[4] With this statement, the film does not propose a concrete solution to human environmental impact, but rather asks the viewer to consider the many contributing factors.

## Critical reception

[edit]

Since its debut at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2006, the film has received generally positive reviews. 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."[5] 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."[6] 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."[7] 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."[8] 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.[9]

Although most have praised the film, there has been some negative reception. 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."[10]

As of April 2012, the film had an average score of 79 on Metacritic based on 16 reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes 84% of critics had given the film a "fresh" rating based on 61 reviews.

## Awards

[edit]

* Best Documentary – 2007 Genie Awards[1]
* Best Canadian Film – Toronto International Film Festival[1]
* Best Canadian Film & Best Documentary - Toronto Film Critics Association Awards[1]
* Nominated for Grand Jury Prize - 2007 Sundance Film Festival[1]
* Reel Current Award (presented by Al Gore) - 2007 Nashville Film Festival[11]
* Best Documentary - 2007 RiverRun International Film Festival[12]

## References

[edit]

1. ^ a b c d e f "edwardburtynsky.com". Retrieved 2007-07-09.
2. ^ Edward Burtynsky
3. ^ "Three Gorges Dam". International Rivers. Retrieved 5 April 2012.
4. ^ Q&A with MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal & Edward Burtynsky - Film Forum, podcast audio. Film Forum. MP3. Accessed October 20, 2014
5. ^ Lisa Schwarzbaum (2007-06-20). "Manufactured Landscapes – Movie Review". Entertainment Weekly. Archived from the original on December 20, 2007. Retrieved 2007-08-19.
6. ^ "An eloquent ecological warning". Boston Globe. 2007-06-22. Retrieved 2007-08-19.
7. ^ Ken Fox. "Manufactured Landscapes Review". TVGuide.com. Retrieved 2007-08-19.
8. ^ Kenneth Baker (2007-07-20). "FILM CLIPS / Also opening today". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 2007-08-19.
9. ^ "Metacritic: 2007 Film Critic Top Ten Lists". Metacritic. Archived from the original on 2008-01-02. Retrieved 2008-01-05.
10. ^ Michael Phillips (2007-07-27). "Movie review: 'Manufactured Landscapes'". Chicago Tribune. Archived from the original on 2007-11-22. Retrieved 2007-08-19.
11. ^ "Nashville Film Festival".
12. ^ "Manufactured Landscapes". IMDB. Retrieved 5 April 2012.

## External links

[edit]

* Manufactured Landscapes at IMDb
* Manufactured Landscapes at Metacritic
* Manufactured Landscapes at Rotten Tomatoes
* Manufactured Landscapes at the National Film Board of Canada catalog

* v
* t
* e

Films directed by Jennifer Baichwal

* Looking You in the Back of the Head (1997)
* Let It Come Down: The Life of Paul Bowles (1998)
* The Holier It Gets (2000)
* The True Meaning of Pictures: Shelby Lee Adams' Appalachia (2002)
* Manufactured Landscapes (2006)
* Act of God (2009)
* Payback (2012)
* Watermark (2013)
* Long Time Running (2017)
* Anthropocene: The Human Epoch (2018)
* Into the Weeds (2022)

Awards for Manufactured Landscapes

* v
* t
* e

Academy of Canadian Cinema & Television for Best Feature Length Documentary and Best Short Documentary

Canadian Film Awards
1968–1978|

* Never a Backward Step (1968)
* Good Times, Bad Times (1969)
* Wild Africa (1970)
* Les Philharmonistes (1971)
* Coming Home (1973)
* Janis (1975)
* Ahô: The Forest People (1976)
* The Inquiry Film: A Report on the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline (1977)
* The Champions (1978)

Genie Awards
1980–2011|

* Paperland: The Bureaucrat Observed (1980)
* Plusieurs tombent en amour (1981)
* P4W: Prison for Women (1982)
* The Devil at Your Heels (1983)
* Pourquoi l'étrange Monsieur Zolock s'intéressait-il tant à la bande dessinée? (1984)
* Raoul Wallenberg: Buried Alive (1985)
* Final Offer (1986)
* Dads and Kids (1987)
* God Rides a Harley (1988)
* Comic Book Confidential (1989)
* Strand: Under the Dark Cloth (1990)
* The Famine Within (1991)
* Deadly Currents (1992)
* Forbidden Love: The Unashamed Stories of Lesbian Lives (1993)
* In the Gutter and Other Good Places (1994)
* The Champagne Safari (1995)
* Bones of the Forest (1996)
* Tu as crié: Let Me Go (1997)
* A Place Called Chiapas (1998)
* Just Watch Me: Trudeau and the '70s Generation (1999)
* Grass (2000)
* Westray (2001)
* Gambling, Gods and LSD (2002)
* FIX: The Story of an Addicted City (2003)
* The Corporation (2004)
* Scared Sacred (2005)
* Manufactured Landscapes (2006)
* Radiant City (2007)
* Up the Yangtze (2008)
* A Hard Name (2009)
* Last Train Home (2010)
* At Night, They Dance (2011)

Canadian Screen Awards
2012–present|

* Stories We Tell (2012)
* Watermark (2013)
* Super Duper Alice Cooper (2014)
* Hurt (2015)
* I Am the Blues (2016)
* Rumble: The Indians Who Rocked the World (2017)
* Anthropocene: The Human Epoch (2018)
* Nîpawistamâsowin: We Will Stand Up (2019)
* Wandering: A Rohingya Story (2020)
* Kímmapiiyipitssini: The Meaning of Empathy (2021)
* To Kill a Tiger (2022)
* Twice Colonized (2023)

Short Documentary|

* Avec tambours et trompettes (1968)
* Juggernaut (1969)
* KW+ (1970)
* The Sea (1971)
* Selling Out (1972)
* Grierson and Faire hurler les murs (1973)
* At 99: A Portrait of Louise Tandy Murch and Cree Hunters of Mistassini (1975)
* Volcano: An Inquiry into the Life and Death of Malcolm Lowry (1976)
* Greenpeace: Voyages to Save the Whales (1977)
* The Hottest Show on Earth (1978)
* Priory: The Only Home I've Got (1980)
* No More Hiroshima (1986)
* The World Is Watching (1989)
* Stunt People (1990)
* The Colours of My Father: A Portrait of Sam Borenstein (1991)
* A Song for Tibet (1992)
* Le singe bleu (1993)
* Fiction and Other Truths: A Film About Jane Rule (1995)
* Maman et Ève (1996)
* Unveiled: The Mother/Daughter Relationship (1997)
* Shadow Maker: Gwendolyn MacEwen, Poet (1998)
* Hemingway: A Portrait (1999)
* The Delian Mode (2009)
* Sirmilik (2011)
* The Boxing Girls of Kabul (2012)
* Chi (2013)
* Jutra (2014)
* Bacon and God's Wrath (2015)
* This River (2016)
* Take a Walk on the Wildside (2017)
* My Dead Dad's Porno Tapes (2018)
* Take Me to Prom (2019)
* Sing Me a Lullaby (2020)
* Nalujuk Night (2021)
* Patty vs. Patty (2022)
* Madeleine (2023)

* v
* t
* e

Toronto Film Critics Association Award for Best Documentary Film

* Bowling for Columbine (2002)
* Capturing the Friedmans (2003)
* The Fog of War (2004)
* Grizzly Man (2005)
* Manufactured Landscapes (2006)
* No End in Sight (2007)
* Man on Wire (2008)
* The Cove (2009)
* Exit Through the Gift Shop (2010)
* Nostalgia for the Light (2011)
* Stories We Tell (2012)
* The Act of Killing (2013)
* The Overnighters (2014)
* The Look of Silence (2015)
* Cameraperson (2016)
* Faces Places (2017)
* Won't You Be My Neighbor? (2018)
* American Factory (2019)
* Collective (2020)
* Summer of Soul (2021)
* All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022)
* 20 Days in Mariupol (2023)
* Dahomey (2024)

* v
* t
* e

Toronto Film Critics Association's Rogers Award for Best Canadian Film

Feature|

* The Sweet Hereafter (1997)
* Last Night (1998)
* Set Me Free (1999)
* waydowntown (2000)
* Last Wedding (2001)
* Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2002)
* Spider (2003)
* The Triplets of Belleville (2004)
* A History of Violence (2005)
* Manufactured Landscapes (2006)
* Away from Her (2007)
* My Winnipeg (2008)
* Polytechnique (2009)
* Incendies (2010)
* Monsieur Lazhar (2011)
* Stories We Tell (2012)
* Watermark (2013)
* Enemy (2014)
* The Forbidden Room (2015)
* The Stairs (2016)
* Werewolf (2017)
* Anthropocene: The Human Epoch (2018)
* The Body Remembers When the World Broke Open (2019)
* Anne at 13,000 Ft. (2020)
* Beans (2021)
* Riceboy Sleeps (2022)
* BlackBerry (2023)

Documentary|

* Swan Song (2023)

* v
* t
* e

Toronto International Film Festival Award for Best Canadian Film

* A Woman in Transit (1984)
* Canada's Sweetheart: The Saga of Hal C. Banks (1985)
* The Decline of the American Empire (1986)
* Family Viewing (1987)
* The Outside Chance of Maximilian Glick (1988)
* Roadkill (1989)
* H (1990)
* The Adjuster (1991)
* Requiem for a Handsome Bastard (1992)
* Kanehsatake: 270 Years of Resistance (1993)
* Exotica (1994)
* Live Bait (1995)
* Long Day's Journey into Night (1996)
* The Hanging Garden / The Sweet Hereafter (1997)
* Nô (1998)
* The Five Senses (1999)
* waydowntown (2000)
* Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (2001)
* Spider (2002)
* The Barbarian Invasions (2003)
* It's All Gone Pete Tong (2004)
* C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005)
* Manufactured Landscapes (2006)
* My Winnipeg (2007)
* Lost Song (2008)
* Cairo Time (2009)
* Incendies (2010)
* Monsieur Lazhar (2011)
* Laurence Anyways (2012)
* When Jews Were Funny (2013)
* Felix and Meira (2014)
* Closet Monster (2015)
* Those Who Make Revolution Halfway Only Dig Their Own Graves (2016)
* Ravenous (2017)
* The Fireflies Are Gone (2018)
* Antigone (2019)
* Inconvenient Indian (2020)
* Ste. Anne (2021)
* To Kill a Tiger (2022)
* Solo (2023)
* Shepherds (2024)

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