The Exuberance of the Exploited

The Brazilian catadores, the Portuguese word for “human scavenger” or “rubbish collectors,” sort tons of recyclable materials from trash in Rio de Janeiro’s Jardim Gramacho, the world’s largest landfill. The lowest class Brazil’s major cities, seen by many as socially senior only to prostitutes, this group of people live in favelas near Rio and are paid on commission for what they scavenge. As shown in Lucy Walker’s documentary Waste Land—which opens Oct. 29 at the Angelika Film Center—a single unfortunate event can cause a lower-middle class family to turn to such dangerous work to make ends meet amongst the garbage.

In her film, Walker documents Brooklyn-based Brazilian artist Vik Muniz’s years-long project of creating oversized portraits of the catadores out of the very recyclables that they spend their days collecting. A study in contrasts, the film follows the emotional transformation of the workers from downtrodden to empowered. Many leave Gramacho after the fruits of their collaboration with Muniz become famous, others choose to stay for camaraderie, workman’s pride, and collective betterment. Both art and film seem excruciatingly polished next to such humble subjects, but it is this very juxtaposition makes their humanity such a strong message.

New York Press: What were your intentions as a documentary filmmaker?

Lucy Walker: It’s tough to make documentaries that are actually worth 90 minutes of an audience’s time. I don’t want to just make films because my ego is so gigantic I can’t stop myself. The challenge is to make this brilliant, life-enhancing film. I saw an opportunity to make one here. The visual qualities that I was really drawn to in Vik’s work were so gorgeous and cinematic, and spoke to me how documentaries can be can be a journey of going from very far away to very close.

I had this revelation that everything I’d ever thrown away hadn’t vanished, it all had actually come to the landfill. I thought this would be an amazing location for film because of the wind and the visuals of the methane gas-distorted air and the contour of the landfill which has been curved into lumps like a hilly landscape, but a sort of parody of that, the layers of this palimpsest, layers of garbage accumulated through the years, and the smell. It’s such a cinematic location, but I’ve never seen it on film before. When I saw Vik and his work about junk, [I saw] the possibility to take Vik’s work into a landfill to meet catadores.

How did you get together with Vik and decide to embark on this project?

When I met him, we had this conversation. The question was, if we made a film together, what would that film be? I knew I didn’t want to make a film which was a survey of his work, because that would be boring. I wanted to challenge him to do one big project.

It’s very similar to my previous film Blindsight in structure. It’s a typical structure, where a privileged, very successful guy has a lot in common with some people who have very challenging lives. He goes back to these people that he shares so much with, trying to give back with the benefits he’s received in his life that have helped him, and drama ensues. In Blindsight that was a bunch of blind people climbing a mountain in Tibet. In this case it was the catadores making this art project in this landfill studio in Rio.

It’s tough to captivate audiences with boring real life. I think finding stories, characters and places that are really going to resonate, that is the challenge.

How did that fall out in this film? Did anything have to be staged?

As a documentarian, I make dresses out of scraps. I use the material I find. You have to rely on the characters, and the dramatic nature of the situation, and trust that if the truth is interesting enough, something interesting is going to happen. In an interview situation, “yeah, yeah, sure,” is easy to say. But it’s actually more about being quiet and observant enough. Tune yourself into the situation so deeply that you can actually let it reveal itself, because if you don’t then you don’t even understand the moment.

The truth is there. If you watch alertly enough, you’ll see it. I feel like a preacher, but it’s what it is, and your job is to figure out what it is and film it in that moment, but you don’t have to make it other than what it is. I don’t think those films are very good. They always ring hollow. The audience is incredibly sophisticated and demanding, and they don’t stand people’s shallow ideas of imposing what they want out of the situation, which make uninteresting or skewed films that become about the filmmaker.

So you would say that your film’s purpose is that of a silent observer rather than making an argument.

Absolutely. Arguments evolve between the people. Tensions and drama and conflicts and concerns are such that they’re going to come up. I wouldn’t choose a subject unless it dramatically had enough potential energy that stuff was going to happen by necessity. Vik could have well concluded that art was a complete waste on these people and I would have made that film.

Blindsight is a fantastic example. They failed to climb the mountain, and that’s what’s interesting about the movie. People set out to prove something by climbing a mountain, and it went badly wrong, thank god. It’s a much more interesting film in a way. But my responsibility is to the truth. I trust the truth to be interesting. I trust the truth to be right. I trust the truth to be true and commit to that.

There’s an amazing quote by Joseph Conrad where he says “with the pressure of your hands and feet, keep yourself afloat.” To me that quote is about trust. Trust the situation and use your own skills, use your own hands and feet to keep yourself afloat. Jump in the ocean, don’t jump in a puddle. Take on the biggest, most interesting subjects you can imagine. Life is short, and if you’re going to be an artist, you better be courageous, you better be good.

Magna talks about how this portrait was very, very, very, very, very important. She’s now divorced and happy and made these changes as a result of being able to see herself for the first time. What’s amazing is that she actually quotes Vik’s initial intention, he wanted to use art to give people a place from which to see themselves. It’s almost like they listened to the beginning of the movie and then quoted it back to us at the end.

Can art help people who haven’t been exposed to the form, can it help them on a practical level to see their lives in a helpful way? The answer is yes. Vik really wanted to change people’s lives with the same materials that they work with every day, and at the end of the movie, Magna says exactly that.

We didn’t fake anything. I have a method that is very effective, I never let people talk about anything related to the project off camera, to the point where I’ll start bouncing around and talking about the weather. And that way everything happens on camera. It’s powerful for the audience because they get that direct experience of an actual unfolding story. I’m not exaggerating. I think it’s just an inherently dramatic situation that I’m accurately, faithfully tuning into, observing, and figuring out how to film and edit.

I noticed that there’s a bricolage of archival footage and current film, somewhat reflective of Muniz’s art form.

There are two very specific forays into archive. One is the bookends, which I think pays off tremendously. It’s a weak opening that’s a great ending. It’s so satisfying to see Tio journey from leading the catadores marching outside the local mayor’s office to not just being on the talk show, but answering back J Soares, who, in Brazil, is like every distinctive show in the US rolled into one. Brings down the house when you show that in a movie theater.

The other thing we do is flash back to a fantastic story about how Vik got shot in the leg but the guy gives him all this money to get out of poverty and move to the US, which sort of started his art career off. The film becomes a meditation on the forces at work. He had the same social background as the catadores, but he winds up the rich artist while they wind up picking through garbage. Art is something that you bid for at an auction, but garbage is of so little value that you can just make it vanish. It could be the opposite. So Vik did this magic trick of turning garbage into art.

In the beginning Vik’s looking from the helicopter, it’s like looking at little ants. And in the middle of the film, Isis is talking about the trauma that turned life into garbage, when she lost her son, she’s never going to forget a single detail, not even the ants on his face. At the end Vik is playing with an ant on the light box, when he’s reflecting on the fact that he was just luckier, and that he wants to make sure that they get more luck in their lives.

Luck can be this massive force that knocks us about, knocks us from being poor to rich or visa versa. For me, the film is very humanizing, forcing you to walk in the footsteps of somebody who has the opposite luck that we have here in New York City. That’s when the film stopped being about Vik’s art, or the individual people, amazing as the catadores are, it really started resonating around themes of human beings, what is it to be alive, how we relate to one another and how our lives unfold.