Exploration of waste ignorance scheduled for Hot Docs
Filmmaker chronicles average family's experience with garbage
Awash with black garbage bags, oppressive odour and a green bin lined with maggots, Garbage! The Revolution Starts at Home chronicles how one family's garage is transformed into a wasteland of their own making.
In Garbage!, his first feature length documentary, Toronto filmmaker Andrew Nisker passionately questions what would happen if the luxury of garbage collection was taken away.
The McDonald family, featured in the film, continued to buy, consume and throw away the trash they created, but for three months, every morsel of waste was separated and stockpiled - diapers and all - in the garage of their North York home.
It's hopefully the inspiration viewers need to amend their lifestyles for the sake of future generations, Nisker said.
"From then on their innocence would be shattered," he said. "They wouldn't be able to deny what they put out."
Nisker, who lives in Toronto's west end, said his goal as a filmmaker is to convey an environmental message in a fun way - well, as fun as it can be when you have ice-caps melting.
Having been a life-long sufferer of asthma, Nisker said he'd always been passionate about the environment, an interest that was sparked as a child, not only by his health, but by watching the plumes of smoke emitting from automobile tail pipes that passed him by.
As an adult, it was meeting Bob Hunter, the founder of Greenpeace, and reading Hunter's book Thermageddon: Countdown to 2030, that Nisker said inspired him to use his flair for filmmaking to become a kind of environmental activist.
Nisker is a graduate of York University and has a background in comedy script writing as well as having produced award-winning television, games, promotions, multimedia and films.
Garbage! was a concept ignited during the strike by City garbage collectors in the summer of 2002.
Trinity Bellwoods Park became a dumping ground that Nisker said astonished him as he passed by each day on his way to work.
"It got me thinking about how disgusting it was and wondering what would happen if the garbage man never came again," Nisker said. "Would we change the way we consume?"
In 2004 he wrote a proposal for a reality television show which would have seen families compete to reduce their consumption habits. He thought it would entertain and enlighten people - but he was told there wasn't a market for environmental programming at the time.
Shortly after that rejection, Hunter passed away. It was literally as Nisker drove home from his friend's funeral that he said he decided he was going to execute his idea on his own and in Hunter's memory.
The birth of his son Sebastian only served to heighten his environmental consciousness even further and compelled him to make the documentary.
Nisker somehow got his friends, the McDonalds, an average urban family of five, to agree to keep every scrap of garbage they created - organics, recyclables and residual waste - for a period of three months.
The documenting of the experiment serves to inspire viewers to wage a war against the world's mounting mounds of garbage in their own homes.
The documentary has received a great deal of attention and has had 75 screenings, but this is his first showing at Hot Docs.
"We are being asked to participate in all sorts of events," Nisker said. "There's a half-a-dozen festivals who want to see it."
Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival is North America's largest documentary festival, presenting a selection of more than 100 documentaries from Canada and around the world. The festival runs from April 17 to 27.
Garbage! The Revolution Starts at Home has screenings on Saturday, April 19 at 1 p.m. at The Bloor Cinema and on Tuesday, April 22 at 9 p.m. at The Al Green Theatre inside the Miles Nadal JCC.
