Filmed over four years, Garbage Dreams focuses on three teenage boys born into the world’s largest "garbage village," a ghetto located on the outskirts of Cairo. An impenetrable labyrinth of narrow roadways camouflaged by trash, the ghetto  is home to 60,000 Zaballeen (or Zabbaleen), Egypt’s “garbage people,” who have survived on minimal compensation for generations by recycling the city's waste. Recycling 80% of the garbage they collect, the Zaballeen created what is arguably the world’s most efficient waste disposal system. But when the city suddenly decides to replace the Zaballeen with multinational garbage disposal companies, the three boys and their community face a change that threatens both their culture and livelihood.

Garbage Dreams is short listed for Best Feature Documentary in the 2010 Academy Awards.

In partnership with:

Mai Iskander is a producer, director and cinematographer based in New York. Garbage Dreams is Mai’s directorial debut. As a cinematographer, Mai has worked on TV shows for A&E, PBS and LOGO, and has filmed numerous dramedies (Roof Sex) and commercials. She has had the privilege of working with the legendary Albert Maysles on the documentary Profiles of a Peacemaker. Mai recently returned from Chad, where she worked with Academy Award nominee Edet Belzberg on her documentary Watchers of the Sky.

Mai started her career working as a camera assistant for the Academy Award nominated cinematographer Miroslav Ondricek (Amadeus, Ragtime). As a camera assistant, Mai worked on over a dozen features, including Preacher's Wife, Men In Black and As Good As It Gets, and on over a hundred commercials. She graduated from New York University, Tisch School of the Arts with a BFA in Film Production and a BA in Economics.

"Garbage Dreams is a moving story of young men searching for ways to eke out a living for their families and facing tough choices as they try to do the right thing for the planet. Mai Iskander guides us into a ‘garbage village,’ a place so different from our own, and yet the choices they face there are so hauntingly familiar. Ultimately, Garbage Dreams makes a compelling case that modernization does not always equal progress."

-- AL GORE

Organizations working with the Zabelleen in Cairo:

• Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives: http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/1843/t/8473/petition.jsp?petition_KE...
• The Recycle Bank: https://www.recyclebank.com/

Community Cinema is screening Garbage Dreams at theaters around the country. Schedules and information, here: http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/garbage-dreams/getinvolved.html

Garbage Dreams is screening this spring on PBS/Independent Lens. More information here: http://www.itvs.org/shows /ataglance.php Trailer:

• Garbage Dreams Website
  http://www.garbagedreams.com/
• ITVS/PBS Schedule
  http://www.itvs.org/shows/ataglance.php
• Top 9 Vids of the Green Viral Movement
  http://ecopolitology.org/2010/01/11/the-top-9-viral-videos-of-the-green-movement-1958-2010/

History

With a population of 18 million, Cairo, the largest city in the Middle East and Africa, has no sanitation service. For generations, the city’s residents have relied on 60,000 Zaballeen, or “garbage people,” to pick up their trash. The Zaballeen collect over 3,000 tons a day of garbage and bring it back to their “garbage village,” the world’s most effective and successful recycling program.

Paid only a minimal amount by residents for their garbage collection services, the Zaballeen survive by recycling. They have transformed Mokattam, their garbage neighborhood, into a busy recycling and trading enclave. Plastic granulators, cloth-grinders and paper and cardboard compacters hum constantly. While Western cities would boast of a 30% recycling rate, the Zaballeen recycle 80% of all the waste they collect.

The Zaballeen, who mostly belong to Egypt’s minority Coptic Christian community, were originally poor and illiterate farm laborers. Driven out of the rural south due to a lack of work, these disadvantaged farmers saw Cairo’s trash as an economic opportunity. They have created a recycling model that costs the state nothing, recycles so much waste and employs tens of thousands of Cairo's poorest.

The Zaballeen earn little, but in a country where almost half of the population survives on less than $2 a day, it is a livelihood. Or has been.

In 2003, following the international trend to privatize services, the city of Cairo sold $50 million in annual contracts to three private companies (two from Italy and one from Spain) to pick up Cairo's garbage. Their giant waste trucks line the streets, but they are contractually obligated to recycle only 20% of what they collect, leaving the rest to rot in giant landfills. As foreign workers came in with waste trucks and began carting garbage to nearby landfills, 60,000 Zaballeen saw their way of life disappearing.

Laila, the teacher at the Recycling School, the garbage village’s local school, sighs with despair, “They don’t see that we are poor people living off of trash. What are we suppose to do now?”

Interview with Mai Iskander

t21: Favorite hour of the day?
MI: Morning.

t21: First website you check?
MI: http://www.grist.org/about/

t21: Personal motto?
MI: Relax into the uncomfortable places.

t21: If I was not a filmmaker I would be a _____?
MI: Environmental litigator or hairdresser.

t21: The biggest global problem today?
MI: Consumerism and greed.

t21: Favorite city or landmark?
MI: Gandhi statue in Washington Square Park.

t21: Favorite public figure?
MI: Snoopy.

t21: Last song that was stuck in your head?
MI: "I Gotta a Feeling" by the Black Eyed Peas.

t21: Last meal you made?
MI: Soup in a can.

t21: Coffee, tea or water?
MI: Coffee.

t21: Boat, plane or train?
MI: Train.

t21: Latest obsession?
MI: My cats.

t21: Source of inspiration?
MI: My grandmother.

t21: First job?
MI: I made salads at an Italian restaurant.

t21: Who would you love to work with?
MI: Barbara Kopple.

t21: What motivated you to create Garbage Dreams ?
MI:The trash-piled streets where the Zaballeen live, which initially seemed terrifying and dirty to me, started to look like the site of a community eminently worthy of preservation and admiration.

t21: Biggest obstacle in making the film?
MI: Getting people used to the camera. I spent many hours filming the boys (over 250 hours of footage), documenting all the nuances of their lives. At the beginning, they did not quite understand what exactly I was filming. I decided to give the boys at the Recycling School a video camera so they could better understand the filmmaking process. 

I was hoping that this would also provide the boys a sense of ownership, so that in some way, they were the authors of their own stories. They listened intently to my instructions, making sure they understood every aspect of the camera. I was blown away by their photographic ability and the intimacy of their footage. I included much more of their footage than I had originally planned. Five minutes of Garbage Dreams was shot by the kids themselves.

t21: Favorite/most unexpected response to Garbage Dreams ?
MI: The most unexpected response was people ask me if it is a narrative or a documentary.

t21: Ten-year goal?
MI: Not to think that far ahead.

t21: Your next or current project?
MI: I am currently working on community outreach for Garbage Dreams; my aim is to help the Zaballeen hold onto their trade by sharing their knowledge with other people around the world. Their are a few great non-profits that I also started working closely with on my outreach campaign, such as Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives and The Recycle Bank. The most rewarding aspect of making this film is witnessing how people become so motivated to make changes in their community recycling system after viewing Garbage Dreams.

I am not sure what my next project is, but I am very interested in topics related to poverty and environmental issues. I am particularly drawn to documentaries that are character driven, that play more like a narrative than a documentary, and that also offer some solutions to the mess of the world. I hope to do another documentary along those lines in the near future.

Director's Statement

In my childhood memories, my family’s hometown of Cairo is a city of chaotic closeness. One minute, you are jostled by crowds of people pushing through the marketplace, accosted by the honking of cars and the barters of merchants. A moment later, you step into a familiar doorway to be grabbed, hugged tightly, and kissed six times on the cheek by a wise and warm grandmother.

When I returned years later as an adult, friends of the family brought me to Mokattam, the garbage city on the outskirts of Cairo. Amid the crowded rooftops, goats, geese and chickens all grazed on remnants of waste. Garbage was piled three stories high. Children played on a mountain of multi-colored rags. And in the midst of it all, the dirt, the pungent smell of the garbage and the poverty, a joyous wedding celebration was taking place. 

Born and raised in the United States, I came from another world — a wealthy, upscale life, a plastic consumerist existence, yet I was made welcome by these newfound friends and family. I was invited into the night’s festivities and into their extraordinarily resilient and joyful community.

In 2005, I returned to Mokattam and volunteered to help paint a mural at the Recycling School. I filmed a few of the students applying vibrant colors and making whimsical pictures on a drab concrete wall, thinking that I could cut together a little film about their mural as a present for them.

 In front of the camera, these amazing children blossomed. They were uninhibited and genuinely pleased that an “outsider” took such interest in them. Most of all, they were proud of their way of life and their history. And like typical teenagers, they wanted to show off their fashion sense, their workout routine, and their music. Always wanting to outdo each other.

 We all became fast friends.

 One of the boys who became a major subject in my film, Osama, started bragging to his friends that an “international film crew” (in actuality it was just myself and my camera) was following him to document his incredibly charismatic self. Neighbors and friends immediately started calling him “Tommy Cruise.”

I returned to Mokattam many times over the next four years, and was always made welcome in the tiny homes or up on their rooftops. This was their only escape from the stench and crowds and chaos below.

I filmed these fantastic teens daily scavenging for tiny bits of cardboard and plastic. I was amazed by the hard, dangerous, dreary work of carrying and sorting garbage with their bare hands, spending hours breathing in the dust of the plastic granulators and fabric grinders, while making a tiny living from bits of trash. Day after day, they would work diligently and proudly without complaint and without self-pity. With poverty all around them, they were always rich in spirit, filled with ambition and pride, and would never allow a visitor to even buy her own soda.

They would work long into the night to clean up after us, the modern, industrialized world. Beyond that, by creating the world’s most effective resource recovery system (they recycle 80% of what they collect) they are actually saving our earth. From out of the trash, they lifted themselves out of poverty and have a solution to the world’s most pressing crisis.

Meanwhile, my three young friends were also growing up very quickly. Osama, the one-time happy slacker, was hoping to find and keep a good job. Nabil dreamed of marrying and making a home of his own. Adham wanted to modernize the recycling trade.

I hope that my friends follow their dreams.

I hope the bigger world will recognize that it is these dreamers who become leaders.

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