Trash Dance // New Orleans Film Society

Trash Dance

USA 67 min.

Director: Andrew Garrison
Writer: DNA
Cinematographers/Additional Photography: Andrew Garrison, Deborah Eve Lewis, Steve Mims, Nancy Schiesari
Editor: Angela K. Pires
Director Bio: Garrison lives in Austin, Texas, and directs documentary and fiction. He teaches production at the University of Texas. Previous films include THIRD WARD TX (2007) and the THE WILGUS STORIES (2000), both of which premiered at SXSW and aired on PBS. On graduating from Antioch College in 1974 he co-founded a political media collective with six friends. He was later invited to work at Appalshop, the acclaimed documentary group in in Eastern Kentucky, where he spent more than a dozen years as a cinematographer, and directing his own work. Garrison’s work has won AFI, Rockefeller and Guggenheim fellowships.
Producer: Andrew Garrison

Video Clips

TRASH DANCE trailer 7-4-12 from Andrew Garrison on Vimeo.

Trash Dance Trailer

Synopsis

Sometimes inspiration can be found in unexpected places. Choreographer Allison Orr finds beauty and grace in garbage trucks, and in the men and women who pick up our trash. Filmmaker Andrew Garrison follows Orr as she joins city sanitation workers on their daily routes to listen, learn, and ultimately to convince them to collaborate in a unique dance performance. Hard working, often carrying a second job, their lives are already full with work, family and dreams of their own. But some step forward and, after months of rehearsal, two dozen trash collectors and their trucks perform an extraordinary spectacle. On an abandoned airport runway, thousands of people show up to see how in the world a garbage truck can “dance.”