These are sent to specialised recycling centres to be gobbled up and coughed out by the powerful rotating jaws of industrial disposal units, and gradually pulverised with water into aggregate-style dust.Īrtfully framed and (delightfully) without dialogue or explanation Geyrhalter lets his startling pictures tell a grim story whose final eerie images explode into hope at the Burning Man festival in Nevada. In Greece, expert divers scour the shallows and depths of the ocean to forage for moop which is then bagged and floated up to the surface where white polythene sacks will remove it by boat to the mainland.Īnd what about that enormous sofa or double bed that mysteriously found its way onto the pavement in the middle of the night. Moop has invaded not only our countryside but also the sea. Geyrhalter’s fellow countryman Michael Glawogger showed how industrial waste is dealt with or – let’s say relocated – to the developing world in his shocking expose 2014 Workingman’s Death This is then carted off to more landfill sites where the cardboard is set alight giving off noxious fumes that only add to the pollution.Įcological progress has been made in some countries where domestic refuse is sorted by mammoth machines and manpower, sorting plastic from glass, paper from tin and relocating the remains for further processing in the recycling battle. And images of these glistening widescreen snowscapes contrast with those of a palm-fringed creamy white beach in the Maldives where staff toil endlessly to sweep away any sign of moop. There is whole industry at work involving rubbish re-sale, but that’s for another film.Įven at the summit of a snowy Swiss mountain, rubbish soon builds up from bars and restaurants there to serve skiers’ requirements. Women there sort through the bags, often taking random items to redistribute back in their villages. Here, lorries packed sky-high with waste struggle through muddy uphill tracks and are often given a push by forklift trucks as they transport their lofty cargoes bound for a landfill site high on the mountainside.
Meanwhile in Nepal, streams and rivulets are festooned with plastic detritus that give a ghostly appearance to the surrounding countryside. Loading the bags into a makeshift van, the debris soon fills the entire vehicle that trundles off to its more ecological destination. In Koman, Northern Albania, ‘volunteers for a clean space’ project have put themselves forward to collect rubbish from a limpid lakeside littered with ‘moop’ from nearby towns and villages. And here he exposes the squalid world of refuse in a way that is both horrifying and compelling. From The Border Fence, to Homo sapiens and Earth he takes a route less travelled to unveil the unusual and oblique that often stares us right in the face. The man in charge of the dig has spent a whole career investigating such hidden refuse buried out of sight, but now not out of mind.Īustrian filmmaker Nikolaus Geyrhalter has spent a lifetime documenting the world, and winning awards for his unique and enquiring vision. This is a landfill site revealing its fascinating contemporary history of sordid ‘treasures’ hidden deep along the water table. But wait – there a tyres here, planks of wood and glass bottles, even a newspaper – still legible – a can of tomatoes and ‘Nestle’ labels everywhere. Earthy clay soil soon gives way to sodden slate-coloured mud. Moop: Matter out of place refers to any object not associated with the immediate environmentĪ mechanical digger buries its steel fist deep into a grassy field in the outskirts of some Austrian city. Dir: Nikolaus Geyrhalter | Doc, Austria, 100′
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