Trashtastic Tuesdays return to everydaytrash.com today after a bit of a hiatus. Filmmaker Mai Iskander was kind enough to answer our questions about her powerful film, Garbage Dreams. Those of you in LA, take note, the film is playing at the Arclight from August 14-20th with Iskander in attendance the first three nights.
Mai Iskander photo via flickr.com/photos/globians/
everydaytrash: How long did this project take you and how did you identify your main subjects?
Iskander: Garbage Dreams is a labor of love that took four years to make. By 2005, I had been working in the film business as a cinematographer for five years and decided to take the winter off and spend it in Cairo. I returned to the garbage village and started volunteering at the local neighborhood school, The Recycling School. The teachers and students really impressed me. Despite their difficult and impoverished life, they were extremely proud in their way of life and their history – and they should be.
The Zaballeen have created the world’s most effective resource recovery system, recycling 80 percent of everything they collect. They are actually saving our Earth. From out of the trash, they lifted themselves out of poverty and have a solution to the world’s most pressing crisis.
Unfortunately, in 2003, never having recognized these strikingly high recycling rates and following globalization trends, Cairo decided to hire three foreign waste companies to clean up its overpopulated mega-city of 18 million people. This Zaballeen community of 60,000 was slowly losing its livelihood.
Of course, as a filmmaker, I quickly saw potential for a story, but it was the teenagers who really drew me in. In addition to the fact that their way of life and community was in jeopardy, these kids were also facing typical teenage concerns: fashion, pop music and their workout routine, and their aspirations to be the coolest and most popular.
More after the jump
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