Review of Beijing Besieged by Waste (2011) by Dennis L — 16 Nov 2017

One part of China's pollution problem.

This is not as good as Jiuliang Wang's more recent "Plastic China" (2016) (see my review), but it is very interesting nonetheless. And it covers more ground, as it were; in fact, Wang visited hundreds of trash dumps, landfills, pig sties, high rise construction sites, polluted rivers and streams, etc. in and around Beijing during the filming.

He shows truckloads of human waste poured into ponds, and trucks dumping huge loads of trash, especially plastic trash onto piles and piles of trash in which men, women and children make their meagre living. I was particularly grossed out by how the penned-in pigs are fed their swill (primarily semi-liquid garbage from restaurants). According to Wang, sometimes the oil from the restaurant garbage is filtered out and resold for human consumption.

Of course, what Wang shows in this film could be filmed in many other cities of the world. The point here is that Beijing is a particularly polluted city. The ground water is polluted, the air is polluted and apparently some of the food is polluted.

The reason I believe that "Plastic China" is a better film is because it focuses more closely and revealingly on the people working the trash. This film is more impersonal and not as well-focused. Additionally, in the six years of so between these two films, Wang has become both a better cinemaphotographer and more aware of the viewer's needs.

--Dennis Littrell, author of "The World Is Not as We Think It Is".