Manufactured Landscapes

Manufactured Landscapes (2006) is a Canadian documentary you can watch online on iFILM, directed by Jennifer Baichwal and built around the work of photographer Edward Burtynsky.

Burtynsky photographs industrial sites at a scale the eye cannot take in from a single viewpoint — factory floors that stretch beyond the frame, quarry walls that look like geological formations, ship-breaking beaches in Bangladesh where ocean liners are reduced to scrap by hand. Baichwal's camera follows him into these spaces without narration. There is no voiceover telling the viewer what to feel.

That restraint is the film's argument. The images are genuinely beautiful, which is the discomfort. Stream Manufactured Landscapes (2006) online on iFILM.