Documentary about Edward Burtynsky and his large-scale photographs is filled with unsettling beauty

MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES (Jennifer Baichwal, 2005)
Maysles Institute
343 Malcolm X Blvd. between 127th & 128th Sts.
Friday, May 11, suggested donation $10, 7:30
Series runs May 11-13
212-582-6050
www.mayslesinstitute.org
www.zeitgeistfilms.com

Photographer Edward Burtynsky has been traveling the world with his large-format viewfinder camera, taking remarkable photographs of environmental landscapes undergoing industrial change. For Manufactured Landscapes, cinematographer Peter Mettler and director Jennifer Baichwal joined Burtynsky on his journey as he documented ships being broken down in Chittagong, Bangladesh; the controversial development of the Three Gorges Dam Project in China, which displaced more than a million people; the uniformity at a factory in Cankun that makes irons and the Deda Chicken Processing Plant in Dehui City; as well as various mines and quarries. Burtynsky’s photos, which were on view at the Brooklyn Museum in late 2005 and often can be seen in Chelsea galleries, are filled with gorgeous colors and a horrible sadness at the lack of humanity they portray. As in the exhibit, the audience is not hit over the head with facts and figures and environmental rhetoric; instead, the pictures pretty much speak for themselves, although Burtynsky does give some limited narration. Baichwal lets the camera linger on its subject, as in the remarkable opening shot, a long, slow pan across a seemingly endless factory. She is also able to get inside the photographs, making them appear to be three-dimensional as she slowly pulls away. Manufactured Landscapes is screening May 11 at the Maysles Cinema as part of the Beyond the Image series, which examines how photography is used in documentary film, and will be followed by a Skype Q&A with Baichwal, moderated by photographer Katie Murray. Curated by Clara Bastid, Maira Nolasco, and Zack Taylor, the series continues May 12 with Cheryl Dunn’s Everybody Street and Albert Maysles and Bradley Kaplan’s Close Up: Photographers at Work, followed by a reception and panel discussion with Maysles, Dunn, and photographers Ricky Powell and Clayton Patterson, moderated by Taylor, and May 13 with Christian Frei’s War Photographer, followed by a Q&A with Nolasco and journalist Jimmie Briggs.