Andjelkovic, K.: “An (Eco)critical Note of The Cultural Heritage Site Through Photographic Representations,” at the FilmForum Conference “The (Un)bearable Lightness of Media,” Udine (IT), November 2nd - 4th 2022. (original) (raw)

Film as Ecophilosophy. Ecocentric Perspectives in Contemporary Italian Cinema

The Ninth Film Symposium: New Trends in Modern and Contemporary Italian. Bloomington, Indiana (USA), April 18-21, 2018

In his 1990 book Toward a Transpersonal Ecology, developing a new foundation for environmental philosophy, Warwick Fox proposed to consider self in an expansive sense through a process of identification with the environment. The shift between an anthropocentric to an ecocentric perspective referred to a psychologization of ecophilosophy. In this sense, the so called “deep ecology” (Næss, 1973) identifies an egalitarian and holistic concept of the world based on the recognition of the equal intrinsic dignity of all biota as well as of their ecological interconnectedness and interdependence. Reconsidering these theoretical premises, my first claim will be that the notion of the film world allows us to identify the basis on which an ecophilosophical study of film can be carried out. How can a film world identify an environmental philosophy? How can it suggest an ecocentric perspective? Moving from the theses of the film as philosophy, this paper will focus on the cinematic representation of the relationship between human and nonhuman and, in particular, on the expression of ecophilosophy in contemporary Italian cinema. The analysis of some movies, such as Bella e perduta (Marcello, 2015) and Spira Mirabilis (D'Anolfi and Parenti, 2016), will be proposed in order to identify the key aspects of a film ecophilosophy for which the film world represents the hermeneutic horizon through which filmgoers can reflect on their own identity and role within the ecosystem.

Cinema as Eco-critical Criticism: Can Movies Represent the Conscience of the Anthropocene?

Ekphrasis, 2020

This paper critically questions the postulate that an ecological conscious cinema performs the task of raising global awareness and generates knowledge about the real problems of the Anthropocene. Interrogating the possibility that a cinematic "eco-mind" could be formed within eco-conscious movies, the author discusses the consequences of the interest displayed by many filmmakers towards the environment and the representation of the multitude of crises our planet faces today. By putting to the test the speculations and methods of eco-criticism, the author returns to the classical method used by Marx and Engels in "Die heilige Familie" and suggests that there is a third option, a path rarely taken, positioning interpretation between the optimistic eco-critical perspective and the hypocritical ecologist propaganda. Denouncing also the eco-Marxist revisions and proposing a reading of contemporary cinema based on the critique of the critical critique, this paper illustrates how this method of interpretation can be used in film studies and could produce an alternative practice in the ever-growing field of environmental humanities.

Cinema and Environment: The Arts of Noticing in the Anthropocene

The aim of this paper is to raise questions about how cinema can allow us to rethink our relationship with the environment in the context of what is known today as the Anthropocene. In the discussion, I chart the current debates about the ecological in the humanities, with a particular focus on new materialisms, to argue that cinema can be fruitfully thought of as part of what anthropologist Anna Tsing (2015) calls the "arts of noticing". I then turn to a consideration of the potential influx of affect theories on ecocriticism and film studies, before sketching out possible approaches to studying film from an affective, new materialist and postanthropocentric perspective. These approaches might have wider implications for rhetorical perspectives on cinema, especially for those investigating emotional appeals.

complete book. Inhospitable World: Cinema in the Time of the Anthropocene

2018

Oxford University Press, 2018 In recent years, environmental and human rights advocates have suggested that we have entered the first new geological epoch since the end of the ice age: the Anthropocene. In this new epoch, humans have come to reshape unwittingly both the climate and natural world; humankind has caused mass extinctions of plant and animal species, polluted the oceans, and irreversibly altered the atmosphere. Ironically, our efforts to make the planet more hospitable to ourselves seem to be driving us toward our inevitable extinction. A force of nature, humanity is now decentered as the agent of history. As Jennifer Fay argues, this new situation is to geological science what cinema has always been to human culture. Film, like the Anthropocene, is a product of the industrial revolution, but arises out of a desire to preserve life and master time and space. It also calls for the creation of artificial worlds, unnatural weather, and deadly environments for entertainment, scientific study, and devising military strategy. Filmmaking stages, quite literally, the process by which worlds and weather come into being and meaning, and it mimics the forces that are driving this new planetary inhospitality. Cinema, in other words, provides an image of "nature" in the age of its mechanical reproducability. Fay argues that cinema exemplifies the philosophical, political, and perhaps even logistical processes by which we can adapt to these forces and also imagine a world without humans in it. Whereas standard ecological criticism attends to the environmental crisis as an unraveling of our natural state, this book looks to film (from Buster Keaton, to Jia Zhangke, to films of atomic testing and early polar exploration) to consider how it reflects upon the creation and destruction of human environments. What are the implications of ecological inhospitality? What role might cinema and media theory play in challenging our presumed right to occupy and populate the world? As an art form, film enjoys a unique relationship to the material, elemental world it captures and produces. Through it, we may appreciate the ambitions to design an unhomely planet that may no longer accommodate us. BLURBS FROM THE BACK-COVER "Compelling and brilliant on every page, Inhospitable Worlds shows where film figures in the slow burn of the Anthropocene. In five clearly drawn and meticulously documented studies running from Keaton to noir, from China's three gorges to atomic testing sites

Sustainability and Film Heritage Revisited

2024

In this essay I aim to address two or three issues related to film heritage sustainability that were only implicit in my doctoral work or that I would like to slightly revise. Essentially, this chapter is about the conceptual boundaries of the term sustainability and its application to the field of culture and film heritage studies. It argues that although the term seems to be overused in public debates, it remains useful and we, as film heritage scholars, should perhaps engage with it far more frequently.

Ecophilosophy in Contemporary Cinema. Rethinking the Relationship Human-NonHuman Through Film

Film-Philosophy Conference 2018. Gothenburg, Sweden July 3-5, 2018

More than 45 years after the publication of Arne Næss’s article “The Shallow and the Deep, Long-Range Ecology Movement” in which the Norwegian philosopher postulated the difference between shallow ecology and deep ecology, the human-nonhuman relationship continues to be at the heart of the debate of environmental philosophy. By adopting diverse approaches and moving from anthropocentric, biocentric, or ecocentric perspectives, environmental philosophers have proposed a variety of theories and models trying to identify the fundamental principles and values on which a coherent, adequate environmental ethics must be based. Within this broad and complex scenario, film can express new and more vivid arguments and offer filmgoers many different film worlds in which they can rethink themselves, reflecting on their role in the ecosystem and their relationship with the nonhuman. Moving from film as philosophy and the related concept of the film world, this paper will focus on the cinematic representation of environment and, in particular, on the analysis of the modes of expression of environmental philosophy in contemporary cinema. Through the analysis of the two conflicting movies The Shallows (Collet-Serra 2016) and The Red Turtle (Dudok de Wit 2016), a discussion on expressive forms will be carried out in order to highlight the key aspects of a film ecophilosophy in which the specific mode of relationship between human and nonhuman is raised to the status of philosophical principle.

Introduction: Inhospitable World: Cinema in the Time of the Anthropocene_

Oxford University Press, 2018 In recent years, environmental and human rights advocates have suggested that we have entered the first new geological epoch since the end of the ice age: the Anthropocene. In this new epoch, humans have come to reshape unwittingly both the climate and natural world; humankind has caused mass extinctions of plant and animal species, polluted the oceans, and irreversibly altered the atmosphere. Ironically, our efforts to make the planet more hospitable to ourselves seem to be driving us toward our inevitable extinction. A force of nature, humanity is now decentered as the agent of history. As Jennifer Fay argues, this new situation is to geological science what cinema has always been to human culture. Film, like the Anthropocene, is a product of the industrial revolution, but arises out of a desire to preserve life and master time and space. It also calls for the creation of artificial worlds, unnatural weather, and deadly environments for entertainment, scientific study, and devising military strategy. Filmmaking stages, quite literally, the process by which worlds and weather come into being and meaning, and it mimics the forces that are driving this new planetary inhospitality. Cinema, in other words, provides an image of "nature" in the age of its mechanical reproducability. Fay argues that cinema exemplifies the philosophical, political, and perhaps even logistical processes by which we can adapt to these forces and also imagine a world without humans in it. Whereas standard ecological criticism attends to the environmental crisis as an unraveling of our natural state, this book looks to film (from Buster Keaton, to Jia Zhangke, to films of atomic testing and early polar exploration) to consider how it reflects upon the creation and destruction of human environments. What are the implications of ecological inhospitality? What role might cinema and media theory play in challenging our presumed right to occupy and populate the world? As an art form, film enjoys a unique relationship to the material, elemental world it captures and produces. Through it, we may appreciate the ambitions to design an unhomely planet that may no longer accommodate us. BLURBS FROM THE BACK-COVER "Compelling and brilliant on every page, Inhospitable Worlds shows where film figures in the slow burn of the Anthropocene. In five clearly drawn and meticulously documented studies running from Keaton to noir, from China's three gorges to atomic testing sites in Nevada, and from the South Pole to the Yukon, Fay draws attention to contradictions and dilemmas at the core of cinema. Crafting a strategy of melancholy to rethink its condition past and present, Fay turns criticism in new and definitive directions. Anyone having concern about the condition of our planet must read Inhospitable World."-- Tom Conley, Abbott Lawrence Lowell Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies and of Romance Languages and Literatures, Harvard University "At a time when much of the world is consumed with anxiety about the fate of the planet, Jennifer Fay shows us a way forward by traveling backward ironically and locating our future in the present. Inhospitable World reveals a history of cinema mobilized, as it were, for the purposes of rendering and conveying a world crisis as it unfolds. Cinema, in Fay's hands, is not only a vehicle, nor merely a medium, but a technology designed in part to capture this crisis invisible elsewhere. Not only a breath-taking feat of film scholarship, Inhospitable World is also a genuine contribution to the task of critical thought in a time of despair. It serves as an exhortation."-- Akira Mizuta Lippit, T. C. Wang Family Endowed Chair in Cinematic Arts, University of Southern California "Inhospitable World teems with cinematic lessons in survival, from the 'survival burlesques' of Buster Keaton to Bill Morrison's chronicle of the Dawson City Film Find. But there's a catch: the survivors of the Anthropocene may not be human. In Fay's arresting account, cinema's profuse world-making hastens, even as it broods on, the unmaking of human futurity. The history of film is retold in these pages as a rehearsal for a world without us."-- Paul K. Saint-Amour, author of Tense Future: Modernism, Total War, Encyclopedic Form

Filming through the milieu. "Becoming extinct" and the Anthropocene

The Anthropocenic Turn. The Interplay between Disciplinary and Interdisciplinary Responses to a New Age, 2020

The chapter discusses how film and the Anthropocene are closely entangled. Given that the Anthropocene addresses all realms of life also the aesthetic become eco-political. The paper addresses recent films by German filmmaker and activist Elke Marhöfer. By drawing on the concept of subjectivity beyond human individuals and following philosopher and psychiatrist Félix Guattari the text explores what could be sites of subjectivation rooted in film viewing. New modes of subjectivity are necessary to face major challenges of societies in the active resistance of the contemporary climate regime. Documentary films, as discussed in the text, are able to work far beyond the transmission of information and content but bear the potential to explore new ways of perception, experience and perspective creating the texture of possible ecological subjectivities. Not only nature and culture, but living and nonliving, human and environment need to be thought anew. Film can contribute to this ongoing reconceptualization of subjectivities as humans are searching for new ways of being with the world.