Edward Burtynsky's "Manufactured Landscapes" Screening (1)

Edward Burtynsky's

Manufactured Landscapes

by Jennifer Baichwal

feature documentary, 88 mins, 2006

Wednesday, July 29th, 2026

Doors open at 6:30PM, screening begins at 7:30PM

MANUFACTURED LANDSCAPES is a feature-length documentary on the world and work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky. Burtynsky makes large-scale photographs of 'manufactured landscapes' – quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines, dams. He photographs civilization’s materials and debris, but in a way people describe as "stunning" or "beautiful," and so raises all kinds of questions about ethics and aesthetics without trying to easily answer them.

The film follows Burtynsky to China as he travels the country photographing the evidence and effects of that country's massive industrial revolution. Sites such as the Three Gorges Dam, which is bigger by 50% than any other dam in the world and displaced over a million people, factory floors over a kilometre long, and the breathtaking scale of Shanghai's urban renewal are subjects for his lens and our motion picture camera.

Shot in Super-16mm film, Manufactured Landscapes extends the narrative streams of Burtynsky's photographs, allowing us to meditate on our profound impact on the planet and witness both the epicentres of industrial endeavour and the dumping grounds of its waste. What makes the photographs so powerful is his refusal in them to be didactic. We are all implicated here, they tell us: there are no easy answers. The film continues this approach of presenting complexity, without trying to reach simplistic judgements or reductive resolutions. In the process, it tries to shift our consciousness about the world and the way we live in it.

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“An extraordinarily haunting, beautiful, insightful, touching and thought-provoking movie.”

Al Gore

"Award-winning filmmaker Jennifer Baichwal stands out on horizon after turning her camera on photographer's scenes."

John Griffin, Montreal Gazette

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Awards & Nominations

Winner Best Documentary, Ecocinema International Film Festival 2008

Winner Genie, Best Feature Documentary 2007

Toronto International Film Festival One of the Top Ten Films of 2006

Winner Best Feature Documentary & Best Canadian Film, Toronto Film Critics Association 2006

Winner TIFF Toronto-City Award, Best Canadian Feature Film 2006

Winner Best Canadian Documentary, Atlantic Film Festival 2006

Winner Best Canadian Documentary, Calgary Film Festival 2006