GARBAGE DREAMS
Produced & directed by Mai Iskander
Released by Wynne Films
Arabic with English subtitles
USA. 79 min. Not Rated
 

David Simon, the creator of The Wire, has a simple summation of capitalism that spells out its vicious mechanics. Under unbridled capitalism—especially during the last 30 years or so—humans are worth less and less. Simple. As the gears of late capitalism keep grinding, life becomes cheap in the way that, more and more, society casts off human beings and confines them to the margins. Last year was a real litmus test, from the bank bailout that helped no one but the affluent to the Copenhagen debacle that did nothing to reduce carbon emissions to the current health care reform mess. The lesson learned, if no one was paying attention, dates back to Marx. Capitalism is a social relation, and therefore, those with little capital, and therefore little power, are nothing, an afterthought, if any kind of thought at all, to those in control.

Garbage Dreams is a great street-level documentary of this principle in play. In Cairo, there had previously been no municipal garbage collection, so the poorest class of people—the Zaballeen, Arabic for “garbage people”—seized upon this as an opportunity and began collecting and recycling the city’s trash, becoming the de facto garbage collectors for the city. By recycling 80% of the trash they collected and selling the raw materials, the Zaballeen subsisted and even thrived in an attenuated way. Cairo, however, embarrassed by the Zaballeen’s bedraggled ways in the slums skirting the city and wishing to modernize, eventually hired foreign corporations with contemporary machinery to head the city’s sanitation services, effectively starving the Zaballeen of their livelihood.

This is all backstory, though, to director Mai Iskander’s film. Rather than laying bare the plot and the behind-the-scenes chicanery in an academic and dispassionate manner, she spends four years following a number of Zaballeen teenagers just as the foreign sanitation companies start to become prevalent. Over the course of filming, the subjects, and many of the Zaballeen, alter from hopeful to existentially adrift as not only their business but their way of life is threatened.

Garbage Dreams shows us a vibrant city and a symbiotic relationship that comes out of the unequal distribution of wealth. While none of the Zaballeen are jubilant over their station, garbage collection is honest work that allows them to have families, to have a purpose and hope for the future—their recycling services have been the means to lifting them out of abject poverty. Iskander is really adept at capturing the disequilibrium that results from Cairo’s so-called modernization, at how the Zaballeen react, and how this all inscribes itself onto the next generation. Garbage Dreams isn’t just a peak into an Egyptian subculture, but an object lesson for the rest of the world. Andrew Beckerman
January 6, 2010