Jason Sondhi

We’re not cleaning the beach, we’re curating the beach.”

Richard and Judith Selby Lang have, for years, been picking up plastic detritus from Kehoe Beach in Northern California and using these found objects to create art. In one year they salvaged over 4,000 pounds of plastic from the narrow stretch of shore.

The results are actually pretty spectacular, as evidenced by the increasing demand from galleries and museums to display the work. This short documentary, One Plastic Beach, is a fascinating primer on the couple’s philosophy and work, with plenty of photographs of their interesting and colorful compositions.

The filmmaking, courtesy of San Francisco-based High Beam Media is not spectacular, but the art often is, and for documentary filmmaking I think that finding a capitivating subject is 80% of your work. High Beam just signed on with the new Atlantic Magazine Video blog that we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, so you can see another of their short documentary pieces there.

As for the Lang’s, exciting developments continue, as September will see the premiere of a new feature documentary on the couple and their work, presented by Barefoot Wines, a company with a strong coastal ecological bent. In the meantime you can connect with the couple and their work through their blog.

Thanks Michelle for the tip.