Sean Glass

Survivors, Bystanders and Perpetrators: Lanzmann's Landmark Marathon Docu Might Be Greatest Doc Ever Made

Sunday, December 5th concludes the 5th annual Romanian Film Festival at Tribeca Cinemas in New York City. This year hosts The Romanian Cultural Institute and curator Mihai Chirilov added the moniker “A New Beginning,” in appreciation of the recent success of what has been dubbed the “Romanian New Wave.”

Starting today, Film Society of Lincoln Center outdoes itself. Israeli production company Cannon films flavored the 1980s with some of the best genre pics of the decade. Producers Menahem Golan and Yoram Globus worked with filmmakers like Woody Allen (acting only), John Frankenheimer, Nicolas Roeg, Jean-Luc Godard, John Cassavetes, Jerry Schatzberg, Barbet Schroeder and even Norman Mailer, all of whom will be on display in this retrospective.

Muniz and Walker have stories of all of their screenings across the globe, and the different reactions each audience had, from the special red carpet and then standing ovation for the actual pickers who came to the Rio Film Festival, to the a screening in what they described as an amphitheater in a swamp in the south of France, quite appropriate for a film that takes place predominantly in a landfill, to a screening in Tokyo with an audience who held in all of their emotions until the end, at which point they all proceeded to cry hysterically.

The film is the story of Brazilian artist Vic Muniz creating an artwork out of Rio’s largest landfill and the “pickers” who work there, rummaging through garbage to find recyclable materials. In the film, the camera is there when Muniz and his partner decide to do this project. It follows Muniz as he first goes to the landfill and meets those who turn into our cast of characters. The film documents their entire arcs as they pertain to the story.