Film draws attention to ‘e-waste’

From its opening tracking shot along the seemingly endless expanse of a Chinese factory floor, Jennifer Baichwal's award-winning documentary feature Manufactured Landscapes offers an amazing and alarming insight into the human and environmental costs of massive industrial expansion. Its focus is the work of renowned Canadian artist Edward Burtynsky whose epic photographs portray (in the artist's own words) 'the landscape that we change - that we disrupt - in pursuit of progress'.

Baichwal captures the artist at work amid some of the most surreal landscapes of the 21st century: the mountains of 'e-waste' in China where 50% of the world's computers end up to be recycled; the Yangtze Valley where whole towns are being demolished to make way for the Three Gorges Dam; the shipbreaking yards of Bangladesh where tankers are stripped of their remaining oil; the crowded skyline of Shanghai which has recently attracted millions of new inhabitants.

Eschewing polemics, Burtynsky aims simply to bring these landscapes into our consciousness, to provoke reflection on some highly inconvenient truths: 'We don't want to give up what we have, but we realise that what we're doing is creating problems that run deep.' But aren't Burtynsky's images of apocalyptic splendour just a little too seductive? As one of his entourage reassures a wary Chinese official: 'through his camera lens - through his eyes - it will all appear beautiful.' Baichwal's film exposes and explores this tension between ethics and aesthetics. One thing's for sure: it's a terrible beauty that's born.