On the outskirts of Rio lies Jardim Gramacho, the world's largest landfill, where over 7,000 thousand tons of garbage are dumped 24 hours a day. Amongst this trash work 3,000-5,000 catadores (pickers), men and women who sift through the garbage to collect recyclables. While the work pays approximately double Brazil's minimum wage, allows the pickers to help the environment, and keeps them from falling into the traps of drug trafficking or prostitution, the life of a picker is one with no future.
Amidst this world of discarded objects and people, documentarian Lucy Walker (the Devil's Playground, Countdown to Zero) and Brazilian-born artist Vik Muniz partnered on a unique project. Muniz, a native of Sao Paulo who has become known for making art pieces out of unconventional materials, traveled to Gramacho with a plan to photograph the pickers, create large-scale portraits of them made out of recyclable materials collected from the dump, and give all the money raised from the sale of the pieces back to the pickers so they could improve their lives. Walker, over a three-year period, captured the process in the new documentary, Waste Land.
Waste Land -- which won the World Cinema Audience Documentary Award at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, the Human Rights Film Award at the Berlin Film Festival, and has earned rave reviews -- is a testament to the transformative power of art, as well as a call for all of us to take a closer look at what we have, what we discard, and the lives of those pushed to the fringes of society.
See my ReThink Review of Waste Land on the Young Turks, as well as my discussion with guest host Ben Mankiewicz about how Muniz's project changed the lives of the pickers, as well as the challenges of making food in a dump.
To find out more about Waste Land and if it is playing near you, visit WasteLandMovie.com. For more ReThink Reviews, visit ReThinkReviews.net To subscribe to ReThink Reviews on YouTube, go here.
Thanks to the members’ pedigree, the Spaceland gig was sold out; fans begged for tickets. The band’s first show, Nov. 10 in Olympia, Wash., was covered by Spin.com. Expectations/hopes are high that in this era when women seem to have to announce their sex to be stars, a band that just plays really well can thrive. Friday’s show exceeded those expectations.
Wild Flag is not necessarily an easy mesh of talents. Timony is an accomplished player, but her style’s much more subdued and artistic than that of the S-K duo. She had a bit of a deer-in-the-headlights look at times, because she sang sometimes too softly about a “glass tambourine” and time travel. She and Brownstein traded lead vocals and guitars. When they laced the sounds of their Fender and Gibson together in feedback-drenched workouts, they gave Sonic Youth a run for its money. With Cole adding ’60s-style Farfisa organ, the sound was reminiscent of early Pink Floyd, with Timony as the gifted, fragile Syd Barrett.
Weiss, who has also drummed with Quasi, Stephen Malkmus and the Go-Betweens, is a powerhouse, no-frills player. Instrumentally, the band is rock solid — several of its songs have choruses with no words. The big question about Wild Flag was what would it do vocally. All four members sing, but none with the range, power and tone of Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker (Tucker has her own band now). There were painful pitch moments Friday; at first, I thought Brownstein was going to massacre the encore of Smith’s “Ask the Angels.”
But then, as she did throughout the evening, Brownstein pulled a tiger from her gut. For four years, the renaissance woman largely traded making music for writing and acting (she has a book contract as well as a sketch-comedy show debuting on the Independent Film Channel). It was as if she’d been building up this head of steam that exploded on the Spaceland stage. During the racehorse song, she battered her guitar against her microphone, albeit somewhat gingerly — but not gingerly enough. Tip for would-be Whos: Wait until your last song to smash your instruments. There was an awkward pause as Brownstein fumbled to get her gear working. “They’re good players, but they’re not mechanics,” Weiss cracked.
Wild Flag is an ensemble, but Brownstein is the driving force. In what seemed to be a nod to the current landscape for women in music, she joked that various songs were covers of Katy Perry and Christina Aguilera. Actually, Wild Flag covered the Rolling Stones (“Beast of Burden”), the Standells (“Dirty Water”) and, in a tribute to her National Book Award, Smith. Brownstein whipped the refrain of “Wild!” in “Ask the Angels,” a nod to her band’s name.
As much as Sleater-Kinney is sorely missed, we now have two great bands to follow.
-- Evelyn McDonnell
Top photo: Carrie Brownstein. Credit: Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times
Bottom photo: Mary Timony: Credit: Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times
bench craft company scam
Can Mobile Phones Think?: Tech <b>News</b> «
Nokia's Beta Labs today released a new experimental application called Situations, and it portends a future where context awareness drives the mobile experience, and points to a time when our handsets will do the thinking on our behalf, ...
The <b>News</b> Diamond reinterpreted: “Let the crowd have the middle <b>...</b>
Jonathon Shuler has published a post exploring the News Diamond from my Model for a 21st Century Newsroom. As part of that he's added an extra layer to th...
Minecraft dev explains sales transparency PC <b>News</b> - Page 1 <b>...</b>
Read our PC news of Minecraft dev explains sales transparency.
bench craft company scam
Can Mobile Phones Think?: Tech <b>News</b> «
Nokia's Beta Labs today released a new experimental application called Situations, and it portends a future where context awareness drives the mobile experience, and points to a time when our handsets will do the thinking on our behalf, ...
The <b>News</b> Diamond reinterpreted: “Let the crowd have the middle <b>...</b>
Jonathon Shuler has published a post exploring the News Diamond from my Model for a 21st Century Newsroom. As part of that he's added an extra layer to th...
Minecraft dev explains sales transparency PC <b>News</b> - Page 1 <b>...</b>
Read our PC news of Minecraft dev explains sales transparency.
bench craft company scam
On the outskirts of Rio lies Jardim Gramacho, the world's largest landfill, where over 7,000 thousand tons of garbage are dumped 24 hours a day. Amongst this trash work 3,000-5,000 catadores (pickers), men and women who sift through the garbage to collect recyclables. While the work pays approximately double Brazil's minimum wage, allows the pickers to help the environment, and keeps them from falling into the traps of drug trafficking or prostitution, the life of a picker is one with no future.
Amidst this world of discarded objects and people, documentarian Lucy Walker (the Devil's Playground, Countdown to Zero) and Brazilian-born artist Vik Muniz partnered on a unique project. Muniz, a native of Sao Paulo who has become known for making art pieces out of unconventional materials, traveled to Gramacho with a plan to photograph the pickers, create large-scale portraits of them made out of recyclable materials collected from the dump, and give all the money raised from the sale of the pieces back to the pickers so they could improve their lives. Walker, over a three-year period, captured the process in the new documentary, Waste Land.
Waste Land -- which won the World Cinema Audience Documentary Award at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, the Human Rights Film Award at the Berlin Film Festival, and has earned rave reviews -- is a testament to the transformative power of art, as well as a call for all of us to take a closer look at what we have, what we discard, and the lives of those pushed to the fringes of society.
See my ReThink Review of Waste Land on the Young Turks, as well as my discussion with guest host Ben Mankiewicz about how Muniz's project changed the lives of the pickers, as well as the challenges of making food in a dump.
To find out more about Waste Land and if it is playing near you, visit WasteLandMovie.com. For more ReThink Reviews, visit ReThinkReviews.net To subscribe to ReThink Reviews on YouTube, go here.
Thanks to the members’ pedigree, the Spaceland gig was sold out; fans begged for tickets. The band’s first show, Nov. 10 in Olympia, Wash., was covered by Spin.com. Expectations/hopes are high that in this era when women seem to have to announce their sex to be stars, a band that just plays really well can thrive. Friday’s show exceeded those expectations.
Wild Flag is not necessarily an easy mesh of talents. Timony is an accomplished player, but her style’s much more subdued and artistic than that of the S-K duo. She had a bit of a deer-in-the-headlights look at times, because she sang sometimes too softly about a “glass tambourine” and time travel. She and Brownstein traded lead vocals and guitars. When they laced the sounds of their Fender and Gibson together in feedback-drenched workouts, they gave Sonic Youth a run for its money. With Cole adding ’60s-style Farfisa organ, the sound was reminiscent of early Pink Floyd, with Timony as the gifted, fragile Syd Barrett.
Weiss, who has also drummed with Quasi, Stephen Malkmus and the Go-Betweens, is a powerhouse, no-frills player. Instrumentally, the band is rock solid — several of its songs have choruses with no words. The big question about Wild Flag was what would it do vocally. All four members sing, but none with the range, power and tone of Sleater-Kinney’s Corin Tucker (Tucker has her own band now). There were painful pitch moments Friday; at first, I thought Brownstein was going to massacre the encore of Smith’s “Ask the Angels.”
But then, as she did throughout the evening, Brownstein pulled a tiger from her gut. For four years, the renaissance woman largely traded making music for writing and acting (she has a book contract as well as a sketch-comedy show debuting on the Independent Film Channel). It was as if she’d been building up this head of steam that exploded on the Spaceland stage. During the racehorse song, she battered her guitar against her microphone, albeit somewhat gingerly — but not gingerly enough. Tip for would-be Whos: Wait until your last song to smash your instruments. There was an awkward pause as Brownstein fumbled to get her gear working. “They’re good players, but they’re not mechanics,” Weiss cracked.
Wild Flag is an ensemble, but Brownstein is the driving force. In what seemed to be a nod to the current landscape for women in music, she joked that various songs were covers of Katy Perry and Christina Aguilera. Actually, Wild Flag covered the Rolling Stones (“Beast of Burden”), the Standells (“Dirty Water”) and, in a tribute to her National Book Award, Smith. Brownstein whipped the refrain of “Wild!” in “Ask the Angels,” a nod to her band’s name.
As much as Sleater-Kinney is sorely missed, we now have two great bands to follow.
-- Evelyn McDonnell
Top photo: Carrie Brownstein. Credit: Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times
Bottom photo: Mary Timony: Credit: Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times
bench craft company scam
Can Mobile Phones Think?: Tech <b>News</b> «
Nokia's Beta Labs today released a new experimental application called Situations, and it portends a future where context awareness drives the mobile experience, and points to a time when our handsets will do the thinking on our behalf, ...
The <b>News</b> Diamond reinterpreted: “Let the crowd have the middle <b>...</b>
Jonathon Shuler has published a post exploring the News Diamond from my Model for a 21st Century Newsroom. As part of that he's added an extra layer to th...
Minecraft dev explains sales transparency PC <b>News</b> - Page 1 <b>...</b>
Read our PC news of Minecraft dev explains sales transparency.
bench craft company scam
Can Mobile Phones Think?: Tech <b>News</b> «
Nokia's Beta Labs today released a new experimental application called Situations, and it portends a future where context awareness drives the mobile experience, and points to a time when our handsets will do the thinking on our behalf, ...
The <b>News</b> Diamond reinterpreted: “Let the crowd have the middle <b>...</b>
Jonathon Shuler has published a post exploring the News Diamond from my Model for a 21st Century Newsroom. As part of that he's added an extra layer to th...
Minecraft dev explains sales transparency PC <b>News</b> - Page 1 <b>...</b>
Read our PC news of Minecraft dev explains sales transparency.
bench craft company scam
No comments:
Post a Comment