Wasteland Reaction Paper

Wasteland is a documentary by Lucy Walker that depicts the lives of selected garbage pickers in Jardim Gramacho – a massive dumpsite found in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. The film is about Vik Muniz’s 2-year journey back to his home country seeking to give back to an impoverished community through making images out of an unusual material – trash. The film featured 7 garbage pickers from the landfill, and each has a story that brought them to their current places. One unique thing about the whole creative process is that the pickers themselves became part of it. Vik imagined that as they work on their own and each other’s images, the pickers will not only show themselves to a broader world that is for now comfortably oblivious of their existence, but also see themselves differently (Fuchs, 2010). It was captivating how the film has transformed lives and how it imparts a provoking thought to

Vik does not only capture the inconvenient truth that most people refuse to see, but also gets us thinking about life in general, leaving no one of us untouched. This exceptional and skilfully crafted piece made me realize about how the things we take for granted like our wastes that we try so hard to get rid of becomes the beginning of life to some people. Moreover, it really astonishes me how people like Magna shows remarkably good spirits and camaraderie despite living in impoverished conditions. Vik Muniz certainly did not fail to unveil the current state of these kinds of people in Brazil, and how the government behaved in an indifferent manner towards them. What made these gigantic canvasses strong, powerful, and effective is seeing a picker like Magna, who fell on hard times when her husband lost his job or Isis, who fell into tragedy after her son’s death, bend down and arrange scraps on their enormous