Front Street Yard
Motion, color, light, and sound all combine to create a dynamic industrial portrait at Grand Rapids, Michigan's Padnos Iron and Metal company. The film encourages a subtle dissolving of the distinction between what we usually see as 'natural' and 'unnatural' processes. The process of sorting the scrap has a slow and patient rhythm, as if we're watching a version of how nature itself breaks things down, through decomposition, into constituent materials. We see rust, scarp, machines - all artificial and ostensibly non-green things. But these objects - and the workers - are all performing a patient and highly effective dance in the interest, after all, of recycling. So the film gives an unexpected and highly unconventional view of what it means to be 'green'.
