Episode 20 - Witnessing Waste, Restoring Scrap

There is a strange and haunting beauty to the discarded massive objects like ships, planes, cars, and phone booths that sit in waste graveyards around the planet. These relics of the past and symbols of our disposable culture are spotlighted in Scrap, a new documentary by filmmaker Stacey Tenenbaum, who tells the stories of the human beings who live with and have relationships with these objects at the end of their useful life. Scrap draws on poetic, cinematic storytelling to allow us to witness what happens to the mammoth waste that we create and discard, and delves into the lost arts of repair, reuse, and restoration that people are reclaiming.

Stacey Tenenbaum is an award-winning producer and director. In 2014 she founded H2L Productions, a boutique documentary film production company. Scrap, a love letter to the things we use in our daily lives, is her third feature documentary and premieres at Hot Docs in May 2022. Stacey is fascinated by things that are old, and she is nostalgic for a time when life was slower, and things were made by hand and built to last.

This conversation with Stacey and Reseed host Alice Irene Whittaker looks at Scrap as a window into not just the worlds of waste that exist around our planet, but also the evolving circular economy where we reduce what we use in the first place, and have a clear plan for everything we make and buy so that our world is waste-free and marked by a balanced relationship with nature and one other. Reuse, restoration, the right to repair movement, and the reevaluation of value are explored in this discussion, as is the vital role that storytelling and art play in the revolution to create a circular, just, and regenerative future. 

Read the transcript and show notes at reseed.ca. Follow @aliceirenewhittaker on Instagram for a chance to win a pair of tickets to the premiere of Scrap at Hot Docs.