Terra Blight

Filmmaker Isaac Brown's Terra Blight exposes the dreadful environmental fallout of the technological revolution. The commercial marketplace mania for faster and fancier hardware means tons of outdated components (especially the older lead-glass cathode-ray tubes in monitors and vintage TVs) that wind up poisoning the soil. Here, the town of Endicott, NY, points to itself as an overlooked victim of a mass-dumping of "e-waste" by IBM, but most of this documentary focuses on coastal Africa where old computers and electronics—ostensibly generous donations to the poor—are sent as discards from the developed world. In Africa, the refuse is smashed to shards by shantytown children in order to recover a few bits of metal and wiring, while the rest taints the environment (an African journalist finds cyber-junk labeled property of the U.S. government—including the EPA). In contrast, viewers also see the work of an enlightened American recycling operation that dismantles and salvages electronic junk with factory precision. Juxtaposing footage of the toxic trash of old PCs with scenes of the newest machines networked in a giant video-game tournament makes for a disturbing and thought-provoking image of the environmental costs of rapid obsolescence. Recommended. Aud: C, P. (C. Cassady)