WASTE LAND Lucy Walker's joyous journey into the social and economic uses of art

Joy of such immense proportion is provided by Lucy Walker in her new documentary WASTE LAND that it almost seems as though she is trying to make up for scaring the pants off some people, while driving others of us to annoyed distraction via her recent film -- the repetitive and heavy-handed antinuclear broad-side Countdown to Zero. That this great joy comes from the unlikely combination of art, garbage and the people who pick through it to find useable/
recycable materials is only part of the film's surprise and appeal. The rest is provided by the artist in charge, Vik Muniz and the half-dozen or so workers that he chooses to use and whom Ms Walker (shown below) captures fleetingly -- yet so fully and beautifully.

When Mr. Muniz -- a highly successful born-in-Brazil, lives-in-Brooklyn artist who had determined to give something back to his ever-beleaguered third-world country -- hit upon using Rio de Janeiro's Jardim Gramacho as a subject of his mixed-media art, he could hardly have know just how produc-tive this would be. (The artist is shown below, standing on a part of this, the world's largest garbage dump.) Of the workers Muniz meets, a few begin to stand out, and each has a fascinating history, which we soon learn.

We watch these workers on the job and visit them in their homes. What appears on screen carries not a whiff of condescension, neither toward the workers nor us viewers. The attitude toward these waste pickers from the general Brazilian public is made known, and how the workers deal with this soon comes clear. The pickers are savvy, caring people, who understand that, though their choices may be limited, they still have choices. How they put these to use is part of what makes Waste Land so involving and moving.

From this large group of men and women, Muniz concentrates on only a few: the workers' chief organizer Tião (above), who ends up posing for the artist's redition of Marat in his bath (Tião's discovery of a tossed-out bathtub leads to this) -- the finished art for which is shown on the poster at top and at the bottom of this post.

The friendly, happy, elderly Irma, who's been at the dump for 26 years, becomes an icon of stately beauty in the portrait the artist creates of her, below (and in close-up, above).

Isis and Valeria, below, and Suelem (further below, at left) are among the younger women whose lives and homes we enter, and who often surprise us with their attitudes toward work, love and the world outside this garbage dump.

One picker prefer night shifts -- cooler temperatures, less people to contend with -- while another offers helpful hints on how to bag one's trash ("You can always identify trash from the poor by the way it is bagged," he explains). Then suddenly the whole movie and its cast is staggered by a terrible event that seems to pull the rug from under everything.

But our workers bounce back, and what happens to the art they've helped create leads the movie into its final stage. Vic and Tião head for London to a museum (probably the New Tate) about which Tião seems bemused: "Art has to communicate something, at least," he decides. Back in Brazil, a local museum show brings together labor, self-esteem, cooperation and art into the kind of transforming event one rarely encounters.

The flow of Walker's film is just lovely: easy, sweet and fleet. The joy you're feeling by the end of Waste Land proves fine art to be not something merely beautiful or meaningful but absolutely essential to civilized society. Walker, Muniz and their subjects connect art to humanity in an insoluble manner.

The movie opens Friday, October 29, at NYC's Angelika Film Center, and on November 5, at L.A.'s NuArt Theater. Further showings can be found by clicking here, then scrolling from bottom to top for the more recent and upcoming screenings.

Surfing and social justice combine in Justin Mitchell's Brazil-based docu RIO BREAKS

The waves may not be as huge as those in last week's surfer documentary Highwater, set in Hawaii, but this week's film about boys on boards (girls, too) proves a much deeper and more encompassing experience.  This occurs because Justin Mitchell, the film's director/co-writer (with Vince Medeiros and John Maier), while interested in the surf, is much more so in the surfers -- their lives, situations and home base in the crime-ridden, drug-ring controlled Favela do Pavão, high above the beach of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (In this way the movie also compares to the recent documentary Only When I Dance, which tells the story of two young Favela residents trying to escape into careers in ballet.)

The two boys that most interest Mr. Mitchell (shown above, center, with some of his young surfers) are fourteen-year-old Fabio (below, left) and twelve-year-old Naamã (below, right), best friends who help each other (and, as often, fight with each other) as they make their halting way toward, they hope, something better. The filmmaker spends most of his time with these two, but he also introduces us to their friends, relatives and mentors -- especially one surfing teacher from the Favela who has managed to make it on his own and insists on helping the next generation gain a foothold on a life apart from drugs and crime.

We also learn about the Surf Club -- run by the surfing mentor, that offers pro bono help for all the kids who come from the Favelas above -- and of the social/economic/criminal life that surrounds these kids.  Gangs such as the Red Command, the Blue Command (we even hear reference made to a "Third" Command) vie for the hearts, minds and bodies of these kids, and as is made very clear in the movie, once you join a gang, the only way out is death. The police?  Well, if you're acquainted with Brazilian crime films such as the prize-winning Elite Squad (click and scroll down), you may perceive the police as at least as problematic as those drug gangs.

Interestingly, surfing itself, while clearly a healthier road for these kids than many other options, is not shown at any length in the first half of the film.  In the second half we see more of it, including some of terrific shots of the young and wiry little fellow named Picachu, above, with his protruding tongue who, even at his young age, wins third place in one of the competitions and looks to be on track for a career here. Our two boys, oddly -- maybe sadly -- have less of a connection to the sport by the end of the film they they appeared to have going in, and yet that seems not the real point.

To Mitchell's great credit, it is the larger, more encompassing life of these children that interests the filmmaker most. So we see and hear bits and pieces of their lives -- from the inevitable battle of the sexes ("Women are like gum," notes once of the boys, sporting a clear, untested bravado. "Once they stick to you, it's hard to get them off.") to a discussion of what they want out of life, including helicopters, that is utterly silly, tender, endearing and so very childlike.  How vulnerable are children, the movie shows us once again, and how difficult it is to "grow up." Toss in the Favelas -- and Brazil's near-empty social contract -- and the problems these kids experience grow exponentially.

Rio Breaks, going straight to DVD via Factory 25, makes its debut this week  You can buy it here or save it to your Netflix queue.  (The nation's largest movie rental service is expected to have a supply available soon...)