Manufactured Landscapes (2007)

Image credit: Edward Burtynsky

Jennifer Baichwal's gorgeous documentary Manufactured Landscapes amplifies the powerful work of Edward Burtynsky, a Canadian artist who specializes in large-scale photographs of terrain transformed by civilization into rivers and tides of industrial ugliness. As Burtynsky trains his contemplative eye on seismic economic changes in China — distilled in the country's epic Three Gorges Dam project — Baichwal makes those still pictures come alive. The opening tracking shot through a Chinese factory where 23,000 employees make most of the world's irons is a stunner. A