Green Screen: Waste Land film showing

We are currently working with the Phoenix cinema to host a series of environmental films. The first was Down to Earth in November, which was introduced by our very own Malcolm Hunter, who gave us an overview of climate science before the film started. 

The second film, in January, was Waste Land. Marie Lefebvre from Leicester Fixers introduced the film by talking about the importance of repair and projects in Leicester that are encouraging people to repair rather than replace. 

Waste Land was the story of an artist who worked with 'pickers', i.e., people collecting materials for recycling, at a landfill site in Brazil. He collaborated with the pickers to create portraits of them using rubbish from the landfill site. Many of us went to see this film expecting it to be rather grim and depressing but in fact it was rather inspiring. The pickers were obviously doing a job that most of us wouldn't choose, and many of them had had to resort to that way of earning their living when something had gone wrong in their life (parents dying, divorce etc.) But in spite of this, they were incredibly dignified and in some cases, even proud of their work. They recognised the importance of what they were doing. The vice-president of the pickers' workers' association explained that any material they could remove from the landfill site would reduce pollution. He said that when people asked him what the point was in recycling one aluminium can, he would reply that 99 is not 100 and that recycling even one can makes a difference. 

The artist's project made the pickers famous. When the president of the pickers' workers' association was interviewed on national television, he corrected the interviewer who introduced him as a 'collector of garbage': 'May I just correct you? We don't collect garbage - we collect recyclable materials.' He received a round of applause. Let's hope we can all get better at recognising the value of our waste.