On sale in the theater only:
MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES The Photographs of Edward Burtynsky
$39.95 plus tax

"An extraordinary, haunting, beautiful, insightful, touching and thought-provoking movie!” – Al Gore

"Staggering!” – Film Threat

“Absorbing…The almost freakishly crystalline detail and obsessively exacting compositions of Mr. Burtynsky’s work can bring to mind that of Ansel Adams, though the subject matter means that it more rightly belongs to the technological sublime than to the natural sublime.”
– Manohla Dargis, The New York Times

“An extraordinary visual record of change on an unprecedented scale.”
– New York Magazine

“(Baichwal) adds a bracing dose of brainwork to (Burtynsky’s) tireless legwork.”
– Richard Brody, The New Yorker

“Grade A. Gorgeous! The opening tracking shot through a Chinese factory is a stunner!”
– Lisa Schwarzbaum, Entertainment Weekly

“The grotesque scale of modernity’s cult of disposability is made plain in this doc (’s)… visual exposés of the world’s industrial hellholes.”
– Mark Holcomb, Time Out NY

“Mesmerizing! The image is breathtaking, even playful – METROPOLIS as designed by Busby Berkeley… Both his photographs and the film (have) the hypnotic otherworldiness of science fiction. Yet the scale and symmetry of Burtynsky’s work tend to eclipse outrage with awe, which adds to its snake-charming potency.”
– Jim Ridley, Village Voice

“The film opens with an amazing eight-minute pan of a seemingly endless Chinese factory….there follows a succession of visually rewarding images (by Mettler and Burtynsky) of sights and sites that the word ‘beautiful’ is rarely used to describe… like something out of a German expressionist film.”
– V.A. Musetto, New York Post

“Rhapsodic! (Burtynsky) makes quiet observations that resonate with poetic irony. It is refreshing to see a film that brings aesthetics into the discussion.”
– Steve Dollar, The New York Sun

MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES begins as a portrait of acclaimed Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, who specializes in large-scale images of vast industrial landscapes. It quickly develops into a meditation on the human and environmental costs of the permanent and profound changes our planet is experiencing. Focusing on Burtynsky’s images of China as it undergoes an unprecedented transformation into a 21st century powerhouse, the film’s surface is beautiful, its implications frightening. Largely shot by Peter Mettler, it captures a brave new world that manages to be both luscious and unutterably repellent, often simultaneously.

Listen to our podcast:
Q & A with MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES
filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal & photographer Edward Burtynsky

Canada • 2006 • 90 minutes • In English & Chinese with English subtitles • Zeitgeist Films