Transnational Ecocinema

Description

Discussion of Hollywood film has dominated much of the contemporary dialogue on ecocriticism and the cinema—until now. With Transnational Ecocinemas, the editors open up the critical debate to look at a larger variety of films from many different countries and cultures. By foregrounding these films with their economic and political contexts, the contributors offer a more comprehensive and nuanced look at the role of place in ecocinema. The essays also interrogate proposed global solutions to environmental issues by presenting an ecocritical perspective on different film cultural considerations from around the globe.

 

PART I: Introduction to Transnational Ecocinema  Introduction: Transnational Ecocinema in an age of Ecological Transformation – Pietari Kääpä and Tommy Gustafsson Transnational Approaches to Ecocinema: Charting an Expansive Field – Pietari Kääpä PART II: Documentary Politics and the Ecological Imagination Colourful Screens: Water Imaginaries in Documentaries from China and Taiwan – Enoch Yee-Lok Tam From My Fancy High Heels to Useless Clothing: ‘Interconnectedness’ and Ecocritical Issues in Transnational Documentaries – Kiu-wai Chu Ecocinema and ‘Good Life’ in Latin America – Roberto Forns-Broggi Dimensions of Humanity in Earthlings (2005) and Encounters at the End of the World (2007) – Ilda Teresa de Castro PART III: Popular Film and Ecology China Has a Natural Environment, Too!: Consumerist and Ideological Ecoimaginaries in the Cinema of Feng Xiaogang – Corrado Neri And the Oscar Goes to … Ecoheroines, Ecoheros and the Development of Ecothemes from The China Syndrome (1979) to GasLand (2010) – Tommy Gustafsson PART IV: (In)Sustainable Footprint Of Cinema  Climate Change Films: Fear and Agency Appeals – Inês Crespo and Ângela Pereira Envisaging Environmental Change: Foregrounding Place in Three Australian Ecomedia Initiatives – Susan Ward and Rebecca Coyle Afterword – Towards a Transnational Understanding of the Anthropocene – Tommy Gustafsson and Pietari Kääpä

Sujets

• Energie & environnement
• Le Syndrome chinois
• Feng Xiaogang
• Earthlings
• General
• Encounters at the End of the World
• Engineering
• History of film
• Technology
• General officer
• The China Syndrome
• Anthropocene
• English as a foreign or second language
• Ecocriticism
• Earthling (disambiguation)
• Sciences et techniques
• Power Resources

Informations

• Publié par: Intellect Books
• Date de parution: 06 janvier 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783201273
• Langue: English

Extrait

First published in the UK in 2013 by Intellect, The Mill, Parnall Road, Fishponds, Bristol, BS16 3JG, UK
First published in the USA in 2013 by Intellect, The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, IL 60637, USA
Copyright © 2013 Intellect Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Cover designer: T/K
Copy-editor: MPS Technologies
Production manager: Jelena Stanovnik
Typesetting: Planman Technologies
ISBN 978-1-84150-729-3
eISBN 978-1-78320-127-3
Printed and bound by Hobbs, UK
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Part I: Introduction to Transnational Ecocinema
Introduction: Transnational Ecocinema in an age of Ecological Transformation
Pietari Kääpä and Tommy Gustafsson
Transnational Approaches to Ecocinema: Charting an Expansive Field
Pietari Kääpä
Part II: Documentary Politics and the Ecological Imagination
Colourful Screens: Water Imaginaries in Documentaries from China and Taiwan
Enoch Yee-Lok Tam
From My Fancy High Heels to Useless Clothing: ‘Interconnectedness’ and Ecocritical Issues in Transnational Documentaries
Kiu-wai Chu
Ecocinema and ‘Good Life’ in Latin America
Roberto Forns-Broggi
Dimensions of Humanity in Earthlings (2005) and Encounters at the End of the World (2007)
Ilda Teresa de Castro
Part III: Popular Film and Ecology
China Has a Natural Environment, Too!: Consumerist and Ideological Ecoimaginaries in the Cinema of Feng Xiaogang
Corrado Neri
And the Oscar Goes to … Ecoheroines, Ecoheros and the Development of Ecothemes from The China Syndrome (1979) to GasLand (2010)
Tommy Gustafsson
Part IV: (In)Sustainable Footprint Of Cinema
Climate Change Films: Fear and Agency Appeals
Inês Crespo and Ângela Pereira
Envisaging Environmental Change: Foregrounding Place in Three Australian Ecomedia Initiatives
Susan Ward and Rebecca Coyle
Afterword—Towards a Transnational Understanding of the Anthropocene
Tommy Gustafsson and Pietari Kääpä
Contributor Details
Index
Acknowledgements
This volume would not have been possible without the institutions and individuals that provided both structural support and critical feedback during its construction. The collective work that has resulted in Transnational Ecocinema has benefitted from inspired contributions by both established and emergent scholars. This combination of perspectives appropriately reflects the emergent interdisciplinary nature of ecocinema studies. As part of a concrete effort to expand the field beyond national industries or culturally located forms of production, the global scope envisioned by the writers is reflected in their personal circumstances—we are fortunate to be able to rethink ecocinema through contributions from scholars based in different continents, from Hong Kong to the United States, from Australia to Latin America. Not only do they write in different geographical and—cultural locations, but their work engages with the ways ecological considerations extend and flow across borders. We would like to extend our gratitude to the following individuals for their comments and support
on preparing the manuscript: Lars-Gustaf Andersson, Henry Bacon, Pat Brereton, Chia-Ju Chang, Sean Cubitt, Jiayan Mi, Salma Monani, Sheldon Lu, Stephen Rust, Leonie Rutherford, Deb Verhoeven, Ingrid Stigsdotter, Jiwei Xiao. Our editors at Intellect, especially Jelena Stanovnik, have provided their usual level of professionalism and support and made the process of editing the book so much more efficient. Last, we would like to thank Holger och Thyra Lauritzens stiftelse för främjande av filmhistorisk verksamhet to whom we are much obliged for their generous economic support for the publication of this book.
PART I
Introduction to Transnational Ecocinema
Introduction: Transnational Ecocinema in an age of Ecological Transformation
Pietari Kääpä and Tommy Gustafsson
Recent years have seen the exponential increase of critical books and articles on ecocinema. These range from seminal works on Hollywood cinema (Ingram 2000; Brereton 2005) to books on specific film cultures (as in the case of Lu and Mi 2009, China). Other collections take a more widespread approach (Willoquet-Maricondi 2010, issues of International Studies in Literature and Environment ) and contribute to the ongoing proliferation of ecocinema studies. For defining the parameters of ecocinema, Lu and Mi’s collection provides a concise but suggestive delineation: firstly, it is a critical grid, an interpretative strategy. Secondly, it is a description of a conscious film practice among a range of different artists and producers. Thinking of the parameters of the field in these terms opens the study to consider films from a perspective that emphasizes their ecological dimensions. It also works to encompass films that have been produced with a participatory ecological dimension in mind. As a burgeoning interdisciplinary form of film studies, ecocinema works to bring back a sense of political participation to a field that has lost some of its explicit engagement with political issues.
While film producers may aim to impart a sense of ecological responsibility to their products, what potential does cinema have for actively challenging environmental deprivation? First of all, film production is a part of the creative industries, and as a form of cultural activity that consumes considerable resources, it leaves a substantial material footprint in its wake. Producers such as Roland Emmerich and James Cameron have recently emphasized the adoption of ‘green’ approaches for their productions; but does this appoach sufficiently compensate for the extent of the resources demanded by the consumption, the production and distribution of films? Feature films are also often seen as forms of entertainment and, only on occasion, treated as something that takes part in social and political debates. If they do so, they may not be taken seriously as documentaries or even works of literature (fictional or not) would be. This is especially the case with Hollywood, which are often derided for their consumerist ideologies. While audiences are certainly capable of reading films like Avatar (2009) and The Day After Tomorrow (2004) as ecological, they are often only dismissed as ‘movies’ and not as films with an actual ecological or environmental contribution to make. Perhaps the real and most pertinent question we should ask is not how cinema can make a contribution to global ecopolitics but whether, ultimately, it can do something beyond raise awareness.
One way of attempting to confront this question directly is turning attention to transnational concerns and the approaches they entail. While prolific caricatures see the field as concerned with ‘imported’ films and esoteric art-house themes, this is more of a hangover of the proliferation and acceptance of Hollywood-type mainstream film culture as the global norm, which, of course, is a typical Western bound notion that neglects the huge cinematic output and distribution of films from Hong Kong, Bollywood and, in the last 20 years, Nollywood, for example. Rather than augmenting the marginalization of transnational film culture as a cultural economic other, we do not take ‘transnational cinema’ as ‘world cinema’, implying that it would be considered as Hollywood’s other, or as a form of art cinema distinct from the commercial mainstream. Studies in transnational cinema are not only to do with ‘art’ films, but are rather a result of an increased realization of the importance of cultural flow and circulation throughout film history. They concern not only investigation of thematic influence and distribution arrangements for specific ‘national’ films but also increased understanding of the ways that global film markets are intertwined and coefficient.
Focusing on what the term ‘transnational’ implies—border crossings on a wide variety of levels—we explore its viability for ecocinema studies. Firstly, synergizing these considerations enables us to ask how a transnational scope and sense of connectivity may expand producers and audiences’ ecological perception and cognitive abilities. In ‘Toward an Eco-cinema’, Scott MacDonald discusses experimental cinema and the challenges it provides viewers, suggesting ‘the fundamental job of eco-cinema [as] retraining of perception, as a way of offering an alternative to conventional media-spectatorship’ (2004: 109). This implies the need for a Brechtian challenge to spectators who are confronted with complex cinematic material that forces them to think differently and asks them to use this cognitive invigoration for politicized purposes.
Our collection does not encourage favouritism of experimental cinema as we consider a range of different types of ecocinema as capable of igniting the necessary ecocritical rethinking. For example, Roberto Forns-Broggi’s chapter on political ecodocumentaries and experimental ecovideos about the Latin American conception of ‘Good Life’ reveals that ecocinema does not have to be ‘difficult’ in order to be political, and furthermore, that these ecofilms not only have the ability to provoke political thought, but also to move audiences to overcome the way in which society ignores nature.
Indeed, while these experimental films nevertheless propose a distinct formal challenge to viewers accustomed to mainstream cinema, our introduction of the ‘transnational’ in the transnational cinema does not have to mean difficult films. In fact, it is not the formal qualities of these films that are their most significant contribution. Instead, it is their ability to navigate between a range of different cinematic paradigms that allows them to generate complexity. They call for cr