Screening Nature: Cinema beyond the Human

Published by Berghahn Books 2013

Screening Nature

Cinema beyond the Human

Edited by: Anat Pick and Guinevere Narraway

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781782382270

Overview
Contents

About this book

Environmentalism and ecology are areas of rapid growth in academia and society at large. Screening Nature is the first comprehensive work that groups together the wide range of concerns in the field of cinema and the environment, and what could be termed “posthuman cinema.” It comprises key readings that highlight the centrality of nature and nonhuman animals to the cinematic medium, and to the language and institution of film. The book offers a fresh and timely intervention into contemporary film theory through a focus on the nonhuman environment as principal register in many filmic texts. Screening Nature offers an extensive resource for teachers, undergraduate students, and more advanced scholars on the intersections between the natural world and the worlds of film. It emphasizes the cross-cultural and geographically diverse relevance of the topic of cinema ecology.

Author / Editor information

Anat Pick lectures in Film Studies at Queen Mary, University of London. Her book Creaturely Poetics: Animality and Vulnerability in Literature and Film was published by Columbia University Press (2011).

Guinevere Narraway lectures on cinema at the University of Tasmania, Hobart, Australia. Her research focus is ecocriticism and moving image culture.

Anat Pick lectures in Film Studies at Queen Mary, University of London. Her book Creaturely Poetics: Animality and Vulnerability in Literature and Film was published by Columbia University Press (2011).

Reviews

"The writers here make you see the world inside and outside of the cinema anew. Screening Nature contains ideas that are as varied and colourful as birds' feathers. This is an important book that pushes cinema forward." · Apichatpong Weerasethakul, winner of the 2010 Cannes Film Festival Palme d'Or prize

"From Avatar to Zen, this remarkable collection of essays goes everywhere in the contemporary film environment to discover remarkable things about what that medium can tell us about ecology. It's fully cognizant of philosophical and theoretical developments in the field, generously global in scope and inclusive of the myriad nonhumans who coexist with us and our films." · Timothy Morton, Rita Shea Guffey Chair in English, Rice University

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
List of Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgements Publicly Available Download PDF	viii
Introduction. Intersecting Ecology and Film Anat Pick and Guinevere Narraway Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
PART I. ECO-POETICS: FILM, FORM AND THE NATURAL WORLD
1. Three Worlds: Dwelling and Worldhood on Screen Anat Pick Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	21
2. Ten Skies, 13 Lakes, 15 Pools – Structure, Immanence and Ecoaesthetics in The Swimmer and James Benning’s Land Films Silke Panse Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	37
3. Land as Protagonist – An Interview with James Benning Silke Panse Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	60
PART II. ZOE--TROPES: ENVISIONING THE NONHUMAN
4. Anthropomorphism and Its Vicissitudes: Reflections on Homme-sick Cinema James Leo Cahill Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	73
5. Animism and the Performative Realist Cinema of Apichatpong Weerasethakul May Adadol Ingawanĳ Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	91
6. Was Blind But Now I See: Animal Liberation Documentaries’ Deconstruction of Barriers to Witnessing Injustice Carrie Packwood Freeman and Scott Tulloch Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	110
7. Filming the Frozen South: Animals in Early Antarctic Exploration Films Elizabeth Leane and Stephen Nicol Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	127
PART III. ECO-POLITICS: ENVIRONMENT, IMAGE, IDEOLOGY
8. Dirty Pictures: Framing Pollution and Desire in ‘new New Queer Cinema’ Sophie Mayer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	145
9. Utopia in the Mud: Nature and Landscape in the Soviet Science Fiction Film Elana Gomel Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	162
10. Animals, Avatars and the Gendering of Nature Claire Molloy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	177
11. Buried Land: Filming the Bosnian Pyramids Steven Eastwood and Geoffrey Alan Rhodes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	194
PART IV. ECO-PRAXIS: FILM AS ENVIRONMENTAL PRACTICE
12. Strange Seeing: Re-viewing Nature in the Films of Rose Lowder Guinevere Narraway Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	213
13. The Art of Self-emptying and Ecological Integration: Bae Yong-kyun’s Why Has Bodhidharma Left for the East? Chia-ju Chang Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	225
14. An Inconvenient Truth: Science and Argumentation in the Expository Documentary Film David Ingram Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	241
15. Planet in Focus: Environmental Film Festivals Kay Armatage Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	257
Notes on Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	275
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	281

Language: English
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 304
Keywords: Film and Television Studies; Cultural Studies (General)

eBook

Published: November 1, 2013
ISBN: 9781782382270