I haven’t yet seen the film, but it seems unanimous that Manufactured Landscapes by Jennifer Baichwal is a stunning film and an apt companion to Davis Guggenheim’s An Inconvenient Truth in illuminating our impact on the Earth. Bright Lights Film Journal has a great interview with the director and Canadian photograph Edward Burtynsky, whose artwork is the inspiration for the film. The film is what I call “experiential documentary,” where the construction of imagery is designed to place you inside the scene, allowing you to interpret for yourself, rather than providing comment or attempting to educate or inform the viewer in a didactic manor.

Manufactured Landscapes may one day be seen not as a slyly staged diatribe or piece of political propaganda, but as a time capsule of civilization at a crossroads, an elegy for life on the cusp of irrevocable change.

Read Made in China: Jennifer Baichwal and Edward Burtynsky on Their Travels Across Manufactured Landscapes by Damon Smith