Film Screening + Q&A: Manufactured Landscapes

Shot in Super-16mm film, Manufactured Landscapes follows Edward Burtynsky (Canadian photographer and artist) to China as he travels the country photographing the evidence and effects of that country’s massive industrial revolution. Sites such as the Three Gorges Dam, which is bigger by 50% than any other dam in the world and displaced over a million people; factory floors over a kilometre long; and the breathtaking scale of Shanghai’s urban renewal are subjects for his lens and Hot Docs’ motion picture camera.

The film extends the narrative streams of Burtynsky’s photographs, allowing us to meditate on our profound impact on the planet and witness both the epicentres of industrial endeavour and the dumping grounds of its waste. What makes the photographs so powerful is his refusal in them to be didactic. We are all implicated here, they tell us: there are no easy answers. The film continues this approach of presenting complexity, without trying to reach simplistic judgements or reductive resolutions. In the process, it tries to shift our consciousness about the world and the way we live in it.

Join photographer Edward Burtynsky and director Jennifer Baichwal for a special post-screening Q&A.