Film Interview: WASTE LAND director Lucy Walker

Documentarian Lucy Walker (Countdown To Zero) discusses her working experience producing Waste Land, her latest film examining Vik Muniz's three year project crafting portraits of Rio's catadores with the very garbage they sift through on a daily basis

After premiering at this year’s Sundance Film Festival and winning numerous awards on the festival circuit, Lucy Walker’s latest documentary Waste Land has now hit the theatrical circuit for regular filmgoers to see for themselves. The film follows the life and work of Brazilian Vik Muniz as he spent three years of his life working to craft portraits of catadores, recyclable pickers who comb through Rio’s largest landfill for reusable materials, exposing their humanity through the very material they spend their lives sifting through. Walker and I had a chance to speak about her film and her personal experience chronicling this fantastic look into art bringing genuine change to peoples’ lives.

Vegas Outsider: How did you first come to meet Vik Muniz & where did the idea to film his project, which would ultimately become Waste Land, originate?

Lucy Walker: I met Vik through Peter Martin, who has a co-producing credit on the film, and is just a great connector who introduced me to Vik and Angus Aynsley, the film’s producer. Angus, Vik, and I were the collaborators who mainly coaxed this thing up. It was just a fantastic meeting of minds with me being inspired by Vik’s work and he being inspired by my work alongside Angus being inspired by what both of us had done and keen to see what would happen if we made a film about Vik. Vik was keen to see what would happen and I was interested in meeting and talking to him in order to find the possibilities organically, through conversation, about how we might collaborate and what he was working on that would make a good film and what kind of film might work structurally to tell the story.

So it was quite collaborative, although he wasn’t sure initially what project he was going to do next as he tried to do some things with garbage before. I was very interested in garbage though and so it was partly my excitement about garbage I think that encouraged him to proceed with this project next. My only rule with this project, which I set at the very beginning, was that I wanted to make sure that nothing happens off-camera. So that was the wonderful trick to it in that we were able to capture the entire process of Vik making these portraits out of garbage, even before he had quite figured out what he was doing.

VO: Did you the film would turnout the way you initially imagined it would or were you dealing with a different animal with what you ultimately captured? Additionally, what were your thoughts about the catadores themselves, the pickers that ultimately drove the project and film forward?

LW: Well, I was really clear about the whole structure we would use but the only thing I didn’t see originally were the people themselves and how amazingly cool they were. I knew they would be dramatic and fascinating as I don’t think you get to work in a landfill without having a pretty dramatic life story; but I didn’t realize they’d have so much to teach us and be so courageous, spirited, and really the coolest people I’d ever met. I expected them to be more troubled and dramatically interesting but perhaps not in such a positive dimension. The structure of the film is actually fairly similar to my previous one Blindsight, where a privileged, successful guy from the United States goes to faraway places like Tibet or Rio and embarks on a challenging journey to prove something in collaboration with the cool people that he meets there.

I was always fascinated to meet the catadores, people who pick through garbage for recyclable materials for a living. They were always a fascination of mine and that was twinned with my fascination for Vik. I knew that the shift would come where as we were following Vik’s journey there would be an opportunity for us to get to know the catadores as well as Vik encountered them and got to know them. Those were never separate journeys as far as I was concerned, and the film talks about that journey starting very far away from people and then getting very close and finally where that leads you at the end of the journey. So the film encompasses all these encounters and comparisons amongst people that are all very dramatic.

VO: Near the end of the project itself, there is a debate over whether or not to bring the workers to London for the auction & whether or not the team is unrealistically raising their expectations only to return them back to the dump. What was your take on it given that you were filming them all the time and were a part of this overall effort?

LW: I think that was a really interesting debate and my answer might be that for some people it would be helpful and for others it would be harmful. I think about my own life, which is often important to ask yourself deeply about your own experience sometimes, and I think about how being exposed to new things has caused tremendous growth and created wonderful opportunity in it but also a sort of pain associated where you don’t quite fit where you came from anymore. I grew up in the UK but at around age twenty I moved to New York City and it was really tough for me. I tried to move back to the UK then and found it to be really challenging and that I wasn’t the same person anymore even though I had been exposed to all the new, wonderful stimulating New York City goodness. It was sort of bittersweet, life is such an amazing unfolding experience and there is a lot of pain, change, and suffering which can mean even more challenge.

But I think other people would side with Vik’s wife, who has a great voice and conscience in the movie and others would side with Vik. What’s sort of interesting I think is that Vik and Tiao have become wonderful friends and are quite kindred spirits. They share certain marvelous qualities and I think it worked out very well that Vik and Tiao went to London together because I think Vik knew that Tiao, like himself, would really benefit and find that it really was in the end more helpful than harmful. But most of all as a filmmaker I must say that this scene in the film is such an interesting question that so many of us who work on the front line positions, i.e. trying to do good in the world or have a positive impact on others, work as teachers, etc., and most of feel that any questioning or conscious debate is better than nothing. I really love that we have this scene in the movie where we suddenly cut to questioning the entire premise in a really, big way and relieved that the film doesn’t leave Vik’s project unexamined. We include the toughest criticism and questioning of what Vik is trying to achieve and leave it in the movie without shying away from it at all.

VO: In the end, how did this overall experience rate for you on a personal & professional level?

LW: The people in front of the camera were mind blowing as well as those who were behind the camera I must say. Just as horrible as the garbage itself was, the collaborators I worked with on this project were the absolute opposite of garbage; they were just treasures. I can’t say enough amazing things about Moby who did the music. I couldn’t believe how generous he has been with us in coming to all the events and telling people it’s the movie he’s most proud of he has working on. The cinematography is amazing, a guy named Dudu Miranda, and I think his shots are amongst the finer documentary shots I can ever recall. With the editing, I honestly set out to find any editor who spoke Portuguese and English (laughs) and knew how to edit documentaries. We found this young man who convinced me he was the best editor for the job. We both had the same sensibility in music and he has this amazing conductive sense, so we shared this sort of Vulcan mind meld in terms of how exactly how to get the music, sound, and visuals to synchronize. And finally I had a wonderful producer in Angus Aynsley so I was just so happy with the amazing team we assembled and honored to meet these people.

I always thought the film would be great but the moment where I felt like a farmer in Bordeaux when the weather is perfect for your grapes, I just knew we had a really special vintage on our hands as it were, was when we went to the landfill the very first day. I went with Peter Martin and we were scouting there seeing everybody. I couldn’t believe the fashionable outfits these women were wearing; they looked so chic in their own way and were laughing. And then cycle into frame Valter when he says ’99 is not 100’ which has sort of become my personal mantra in which every single little thing we do is important; every person we are and moment we have and thing we say, make, show, makes a difference. He came into frame with these trinkets on his bike that he’d gotten from the garbage. They were so adorable and charming and it was surprising to find people who had gotten over all the disgustingness of garbage and were redeeming themselves and these items and life in general, clutching victory away from waste as well as life away from detritus. I was so shocked that I called up Angus and said ‘Oh my goodness, this is going to be great’ and it was (laughs). I feel like in the end this was definitely a once in a lifetime journey.

To learn more, go to www.wastelandmovie.com and www.arthousefilmsonline.com