Ecology and Contemporary Nordic Cinemas: From Nation-building to Ecocosmopolitanism
... Much of the academic work conducted on environmental media education has focused on content and the uses of media-based environmental communication in classrooms (see Lopez, 2021). Such perspectives build on extensive research into environmental messaging in diverse media -film (Brereton, 2005;Ingram, 2004;Kääpä, 2014;Monani et al., 2012), television (Good, 2013 and the internet (Anderson, 2014). Here, scholarship in the field of environmental education draws from these approaches, as it tends to use media texts (films and so on) as illustrations of wider environmental concerns (Kahn, 2010;López, 2014), highlighting the necessity to teach media literacy. ...
... William Rueckert introduced the term eco-criticism in his essay 'Literature and Ecology: An Experiment in Ecocriticism' as "the study of the relationship between literature and physical environment" (Glotfelty & Fromm 1996: xviii). However, the relevance and the application of eco-criticism in scholarship have evolved to connote various forms of textual portrayals and interpretive assessment of ecology through critical creative arts such as music (Rehding 2002;Allen 2011; Smith 2019), films (Ivakhiv 2013;Kääpä 2014;Bülbül 2015), and fine arts (Braddock 2009). Regardless of the media individuals utilize to engage in eco-criticism, the common characteristic that cuts across in their endeavour is that each eco-critical art presents a purposive sharing of the author's perceptions and inclinations on ecology and the realities of human actions and inaction on ecology. ...
Studies on self-construal indicate that man is propelled by what happens around him to react in a certain
manner and this reaction, we suggest is a human universal common and a representation of conscious
purposive response to concomitant environmental and circumstantial realities. This purposive response
encapsulates messages, which an observer articulates and interprets; hence, our study is about deepening
our understanding of the factors and variables responsible for victimhood self-construal projected in select
texts on the Niger Delta environmental despoilment. Drawing from the theories of eco-criticism, victimhood,
and self-construal, this study utilizes an interpretive approach to discuss select instances of victimhood
portrayals in the poem ‘Delta Blues’ by Tanure Ojaide, in the drama Hangmen also Die by Esiaba Irobi and
in the film Blood and Oil, directed by Curtis Graham. The study examines the primary reason, which is the
dispossession of livelihood by environmentally destructive oil exploitation, adduced by the Niger Delta
inhabitants to understand how it generates variables that instigate victimhood self-construal. Our
observation is that in the texts the inhabitants’ victimhood self-construal can be described as purposive, the
propelling variable is their concomitant environmental realities and the texts as communication media have
different encumbrances and advantages regarding their efficacy and utility for advocacy.
Keywords: eco-criticism, eco-literature, eco-film, Niger Delta, self-construal, visual metaphor.
... Beginning with the short films Kørsel med Grønlandske hunde/Traveling with Greenlandic Dogs (Peter Elfelt, 1897) and Fiskerlivets farer/The Dangers in a Fisherman's Life (Julius Jaenzon, 1907), the imposing landscapes blazed on celluloid, pioneering the ways in which Nordic geographies would be represented on screen: remote, unsullied, and perennial. For the remainder of the twentieth century, auteurs and commercial directors alike revelled in the visual qualities of the Nordic wilderness as a palimpsest for telling stories that reified and/or challenged national idylls (see Kääpä 2014). Contemporary filmmakers from beyond the region have increasingly flocked to Iceland to capture its land-and seascapes, presenting these otherworldly vistas as primordial spaces beyond time in such big-budget dramas as Noah (2014) and Interstellar (2014). ...
... In addition, ecocriticism projects articulations of "eco-centric values of meticulous observation, collective ethical responsibility" in eco-critical arts (Ibid). Essentially, from the work of Rueckert, eco-criticism, which began as "the study of the relationship between literature and physical environment" (Glotfelty & Fromm 1996, xviii), has evolved to encompass interpretive discourses on emerging eco-critical portrayals in music (see Rehding 2002;Allen 2011;Smith 2019), film (Ivakhiv 2013;Kääpä 2014;Bülbül 2015), and fine arts (Braddock 2009 NIGER DELTA AND THE LAMENTATIONS OF ECO-LITERATI Niger Delta consists of nine oil-producing states in the south-south, southeast, and southwest regions of Nigeria. They are Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross-River, Delta, Edo and Rivers states (in the south-south), Abia and Imo (in the southeast) and Ondo (in the southwest) (Asuni 2009;Nwaozuzu et al. 2020). ...
Focused on eco-drama decrying polemics of conflicts between elders and youths, government and inhabitants, because of the subsisting environmental degradation in Niger Delta, the article exposes dimensions of frightening inhumanity, wastage, and monumental governance failure. Eco-literati such as Ahmed Yerima and Barclays Ayakoroma objurgate a repulsive culture of hypocrisy, mediocrity, nepotism, lack of patriotism, social injustice, and dysfunctional socio-political structure. This paper discusses the nuances of convergences and divergences in the playwrights' utilization of eco-critical language in portraying shades of victimhood claims, and deplorable actions and inactions, which are inimical to the environment and wellbeing of the people in the region. Drawing from eco-criticism and interpretive approach, the paper examines the portrayal of implicit and overt instances of complicity in the actions and inactions of key characters in the plays as metaphors representing social-political negativities propelling retrogression, pain, and restiveness in the Niger Delta. The observation is that both plays blame the upsurge in discontent and violent restiveness on abysmal leadership by local elders/leaders, as well as the state, federal government and the multinationals.
... Beginning with the short films Kørsel med Grønlandske hunde/Traveling with Greenlandic Dogs (Peter Elfelt, 1897) and Fiskerlivets farer/The Dangers in a Fisherman's Life (Julius Jaenzon, 1907), the imposing landscapes blazed on celluloid, pioneering the ways in which Nordic geographies would be represented on screen: remote, unsullied, and perennial. For the remainder of the twentieth century, auteurs and commercial directors alike revelled in the visual qualities of the Nordic wilderness as a palimpsest for telling stories that reified and/or challenged national idylls (see Kääpä 2014). Contemporary filmmakers from beyond the region have increasingly flocked to Iceland to capture its land-and seascapes, presenting these otherworldly vistas as primordial spaces beyond time in such big-budget dramas as Noah (2014) and Interstellar (2014). ...
The imaginaries of northern landscape have not remained static in the era of ecological crisis but play a pivotal function within the geopolitics of visual representation. Such imaginaries can sanction those dominant discourses that frame environmental catastrophe as the consequence of undifferentiated human activity, but, it is argued, they also have the capacity to represent a complexity and heterogeneity frequently absent from this broad discursive field. The contributors to this volume engage with the practice, curation and utilization of photography and other lens-based media, to examine the critical role of visual culture in shaping and interrogating conceptions of environmental catastrophe.
... The ecotope, can be a point of ecosystemic friction between the humans attempting to control their environment and the environment being uncontrollable. Kääpä uses the film Jurassic Park as an example; the humans try and fail to control the dinosaurs and end up having to leave them alone or be destroyed (Kääpä, 2015). In the case of the island in Moominpappa at Sea the result is less dramatic, but it is clearly a point of ecosystemic friction. ...
As humans we are constantly engaging not only with other humans but with plants, animals, and matter. This article examines the way we view our engagement with the materiality of the world around us, by looking at the work of philosopher Jane Bennet on vibrant materiality and author Tove Jansson. Bennet presents an argument that matter can be analysed as active and vibrant. While Western philosophers are used to viewing matter as passive and dead, seeing it as active makes space for different engagement with matter. One of the ways we can start engaging with matter, once we stop thinking of it as passive and dead, is through the lens of ethics. Jansson in her children’s book Moominpappa at Sea shows a possibility for looking at the material world through this ethical lens. This article will put these works in conversation by reading both as philosophical works that have nuanced engagement with the topic of how we can be in community with the things that surround us. Jansson’s work provides a helpful addition to Vibrant Matter by showing how we are inextricably entangled in harm, and providing a possible way to live with this reality.
... esim. Kääpä 2014;O'Brien 2018). Yksi sellainen esimerkki on "ekogotiikka". ...
... Bu makalede de incelemeler yapılırken hareket ekseni çoklukla bu minimum ortak alan olacaktır. Pietari Kääpä (2014), sinemanın ekolojik toplumsal işlevini ön plana alarak, anaakım olan ya da olmayan her filme ekolojik yaklaşılabileceğini ileri sürer. Scott MacDonald (2013), sanat sineması, deneysel ve avangart yaklaşımlar ile 'yavaş sinema' (slow cinema) anlayışının ekolojik duyarlılık yaratarak ekosinema üretmeye uygun olabileceğini düşünür; "ekosinemanın görevinin konvansiyonel medya izleyiciliğine alternatif oluşturacak ve çevresel açıdan daha ileri fikirli düşünce yapıları ortaya çıkaracak yeni film deneyimi biçimleri temin etmesi" olduğunu belirtir (MacDonald, 2013, p. 20 Film kültürüne 'ekolojik' bir anlayışın sadece çevreci politikalarla ilgilenen veya doğaya estetik bakabilen filmlerde değil, tüm filmlerde aranacağını belirten Kääpä'nın tanımıyla: "Ekosinema, kültürel üretim içerisinde çevrecilik ve doğanın temsil edildiği geleneksel yöntemleri sorgulamaya dayanan yorumlayıcı bir stratejidir. ...
‘Doğaya dönüş’ birçok ülkenin popüler ve bağımsız sinemasında çeşitli tür, alt türler ve yaklaşımlarla örneklerine sıkça rastlanan bir temadır. Doğaya dönüş üzerinden insanın doğayla mücadelesi, uzlaşımı ve onunla uyumlanma süreçleri, toplumdan uzaklaşarak doğada izole olma, doğayla tanışıp kendini bulma gibi konuları ele alan filmlerin uzun bir listesi yapılabilir. Son dönem Türk Sineması’nda bu temaya oldukça farklı açılardan yaklaşan iki film olan Koca Dünya (Reha Erdem, 2016) ve Yuva (Emre Yeksan, 2018) dikkate değerdir. İçine düştükleri durumdan kaçarak ormana sığınan Ali ve Zuhal’in öyküsünü anlatan Koca Dünya ve tek başına ormanda yaşamayı seçen Veysel’in oradan zorla çıkarılma sürecini konu alan Yuva filmleri bambaşka evrenler kurarken neredeyse organik bir bağa sahiptirler. Filmlerdeki doğaya dönüş, ekolojik hassasiyetlerin tespit edilebileceği, üzerinden doğa, insan ve ekoloji hakkında çıkarımlar yapmaya açık, düşünsel arka planı zengin ve katmanlı bir dönüştür. Karakterlerini doğayla en kadim ilişkilerine geri döndürerek onları ait olunabilen, bir ağacın dalı olup ormanın zeminine karışarak parçası olunabilen bir yer olarak doğa düşüncesiyle ilişkilendirirler. Hem Koca Dünya hem de Yuva, anlattıkları öykülerde doğayı ‘insanmerkezci’ (antroposantrik) biçimlerde konumlandırmayan, bu yaklaşımlarıyla da ‘ekosinema’ bakış açılarıyla örtüşen filmlerdir. Makalede sinemaya ait yöntem ve araçlarla doğa ve insan ilişkisi üzerine nasıl bir ekolojik perspektif üretildiği incelenecek; ‘ekosinema’ tartışmaları çerçevesinde ‘doğamerkezci’ bakışın hangi anlatısal ve görsel-işitsel yöntemlerle oluşturulduğu irdelenecektir.
... El cine ha retratado la naturaleza y sus más variadas expresiones desde sus inicios, pero sólo en las últimas décadas se ha adoptado una perspectiva ecológica para analizar aquellos filmes en los que se pone en escena la relación del ser humano con el medio natural. Aunque el término Ecocine fue desarrollado teóricamente por Roger C. Anderson en 1975, ha sido en el siglo XXI cuando se ha producido una ampliación del campo de estudio (MURRAY & HEUMANN, 2009; RUST, MONANI & CUBITTY, 2012; PICK & NARRAWAY, 2013) y la ecocrítica se ha aplicado a cinematografías nacionales (BRERETON, 2004;KÄAPÄ, 2015) o a autores o filmes singulares. Desde esta perspectiva, analizaremos los filmes O que arde (Oliver Laxe, 2019), Trote (Xacio Baño, 2018) y Trinta Lumes (Diana Toucedo, 2017) tres obras que, con el sello del Novo Cinema Galego, presentan la desaparición de la vida rural en la Galicia contemporánea y el consiguiente cambio de relación de las personas con el medio natural. ...
El cine ha retratado la naturaleza y sus más variadas expresiones desde sus inicios, pero sólo en las últimas décadas se ha adoptado una perspectiva ecológica para analizar aquellos filmes en los que se pone en escena la relación del ser humano con el medio natural. Aunque el término Ecocine fue desarrollado teóricamente por Roger C. Anderson en 1975, ha sido en el siglo XXI cuando se ha producido una ampliación del campo de estudio (MURRAY & HEUMANN, 2009; RUST, MONANI & CUBITTY, 2012; PICK & NARRAWAY, 2013) y la ecocrítica se ha aplicado a cinematografías nacionales (BRERETON, 2004; KÄAPÄ, 2015) o a autores o filmes singulares. Desde esta perspectiva, analizaremos los filmes O que arde (Oliver Laxe, 2019), Trote (Xacio Baño, 2018) y Trinta Lumes (Diana Toucedo, 2017) tres obras que, con el
sello del Novo Cinema Galego, presentan la desaparición de la vida rural en la Galicia contemporánea y el consiguiente cambio de relación de las personas con el medio natural.
... Many arthouse and independent films address the traumatic prospect of humanity faced with its own extinction (Kaplan 2015;Horn 2018). Although most of these films on technological and environmental collapse come from North America, productions from Europe are also on the rise (Kääpä 2014). A prominent example is the 2018 Swedish science fiction film Aniara, the debut feature from co-writers and co-directors Pella Kågerman and Hugo Lilja. ...
While Harry Martinson’s epic space poem Aniara (1956) has received little attention outside Sweden over the last half-century, several new adaptations have appeared in recent years, most notably the 2018 science fiction film Aniara . This article explores the reason for this renewed interest and argues that, in addition to ecocritical aspects, it is the interest in human‐machine relations that has contributed to the rediscovery. Drawing on Jane Bennett’s notion of thing-power, the article focuses on the spaceship Aniara’s artificial intelligence, Mima. Both in Martinson’s text and the film adaptation, Mima is depicted as a sentient machine that does not show empathy with suffering humans but rather with the suffering of nature, epitomized in crying stones. Analysing the motif of the crying stones in more detail, the article seeks to contribute to the discussion about emotional attachment between humans, technology and nature.
... Other writers highlight the geopolitical, cultural, and bioregional specificities of the region. From the pastoral imagery and aesthetics of coldness of Alpine mountainscapes in Swiss cinema (Böhler 2009) to the reference of forest myths in Finnish films (Kääpä 2014), scholars reveal how climate and weather, representation of landscapes, and environmental problems encountered in some European countries characterize European ecocinema in particular ways. Film is also seen as an educational tool for encouraging people to reconnect with nature and the nonhuman world. ...
This article introduces recent English scholarship in the expanding field of ecocinema studies. Often seen as a sub-branch of ecocriticism, ecocinema studies (also referred to as “green film criticism,” “eco-film criticism,” or “eco-cinemacriticism”) started to develop only slightly over the past decade or so. All books and articles cited have been published after the mid-1990s, thus revealing the field’s short history and fast expansion. This article is organized in three broad sections. The first five sections focus on the theory and practice of ecocinema studies. General Anthologies introduces edited volumes dedicated to a wide range of thematic issues and theoretical approaches in ecocinema studies. Theorizing Ecocinema: Ethics, Aesthetics, and Politics introduces film scholarship that contribute to define, conceptualize, and define “ecocinema” from ethical, aesthetic, and political dimensions. Eco-Genres: Documentary, Animation, Sci-Fi, and Horror highlights several genres that are often discussed in ecocritical scholarship. As ecocinema studies are, to a large extent, a study of the interplay among film, ecology, and the human mind, books that focus on human’s affective, cognitive, and emotive responses to ecocinema are also a major aspect in the field’s theorization, as reflected in Affect, Cognition, Emotions. Reading Beyond the Text: From Theory to Practice goes beyond a textual analysis of films and puts ecological and environmental ideologies into practice by incorporating writings on the ecological footprint of film, environmental film festivals, and audience studies, as well as pedagogical practices in ecocinema. The next sections introduce works that center around five major themes in ecocinema studies. The Environment: Landscapes and Seascapes and Wildlife, Animal Justice, and Human–Animal Relationships discuss humans’ relationships with the nonhuman world—namely, the (natural and urban) environments—and the nonhuman creatures such as animals and wildlife. The sections on Food Studies; Weather, Climate Change, and Eco-Disasters; and Pollution, Waste, and Toxicity center on those issues, highlighting the urgency of the worsening environmental issues in the contemporary world. The final sections are structured according to geopolitical territories. In addition to books and articles on Hollywood and American Independent Cinema and European Cinemas, recent scholarly works that focus on Asian and the Global Indigenous Cinemas, particularly films from the Global South, have also been introduced. Despite the hope for this entry to be as comprehensive as possible, film scholarship has not been included from neglected countries and regions that are beyond Western and East Asian contexts, such as the relatively under-discussed scholarship from Australasia, Africa, Antarctica, and other parts of the world, because of the limited availability and accessibility of works on these countries.
... Environmental concerns and the relationship between human beings and nature are central to Nordic film cultures (see, e.g., Kääpä, 2014). In a number of recent television series, including the Norwegian With limited exceptions, such as Finland's dependence on nuclear power and Norway's oil-driven economic growth, the Nordic countries are associated with (both from within and from outside) a high level of environmental consciousness. ...
This article examines the Norwegian climate fiction television series Okkupert [Occupied] (2015–), focusing on the ways in which it reveals the complicity of Nordic subjects in an ecological dystopia. I argue that in illuminating this complicity, the series reimagines the Norwegian national self-conception rooted in a discourse of Norway's exceptionalist relation to nature. I show how Norway's green (self-)image is expressed through what I call “white ecology” – an aesthetics of whiteness encoded in neoromantic mountainous winter landscapes widely associated with the North, but also in the figure of the Norwegian white male polar explorer. I argue in this article that Occupied challenges this white-ecological masculine discourse through “dark ecology” (Morton, 2007), embodied by Russia and expressed by the avoidance of spectacular landscape aesthetics as well as by the strategy of “enmeshment”, facilitated by the medium of televisual long-form storytelling and the eco-noir aesthetics.
... Other writers highlight the geopolitical, cultural, and bioregional specificities of the region. From the pastoral imagery and aesthetics of coldness of Alpine mountainscapes in Swiss cinema (Böhler 2009) to the reference of forest myths in Finnish films (Kääpä 2014), scholars reveal how climate and weather, representation of landscapes, and environmental problems encountered in some European countries characterize European ecocinema in particular ways. Film is also seen as an educational tool for encouraging people to reconnect with nature and the nonhuman world. ...
Citations of over 100 titles of books and journal articles on "Ecocinema".
... This also allows Gaup to emphasise a timeless sense of communal closeness. However, Pietari Kääpä (2014) questions the phantasmatic qualities of both its narrative premise and the visual representation of Sápmi as a home to eternal mythology and wisdom. Kääpä discusses the pitfalls of such an approach stating how 'the emphasis on exoticism and myth plays into the politics of othering, enabling the construction of the Sámi as different from the hegemonic norm' (Kääpä 2014: 166). ...
Swedish-Sámi filmmaker and artist Liselotte Wajstedt and her experimental road movie documentary Sámi Nieida Jojk (Sámi Daughter Yoik, 2007) provide a unique insight into displaced Indigenous identity. To explore her mother’s repressed Sámi ancestry, Wajstedt uses an eclectic mix of techniques, including animation, collage illustrations, photographs, and superimposition. Throughout the film, Wajstedt uses her body as a physical canvas, projecting images of her autobiographical journey onto herself. These methods contribute to a sense of metamorphosis, where the filmmaker plays with and challenges conventional Sámi representations through film form. I propose that somatechnics, a concept that describes a reciprocal relationship between the body and technology, provides a helpful way of understanding Wajstedt’s work. I argue that cinema can work as a somatechnic tool that can help unpack the Indigenous body as a symbol of cultural, geopolitical, and ethnic identity politics. I also explore Sámi Daughter Yoik as a nomadic film, arguing that the somatechnic potential of cinema is most evident when themes of space, transition, and the body converge to create a more fluid understanding of Sámi identity onscreen.
Cet article examine l’utilisation de l’essai filmique par les cinéastes issus de minorités finno-sames pour revitaliser, récupérer et diffuser leurs langues, leurs cultures et leurs racines. Deux réalisatrices, Katja Gauriloff et Miia Tervo, ont réalisé deux documentaires, La Forêt enchantée de Kaisa (Kuun metsän Kaisa, 2016) et [Santra et les arbres parlants] (Santra ja puhuvat puut, 2013), qui s’intéressent aux enjeux identitaires et culturels de langues finno-sames menacées de disparition. Utilisant une variété de types d’images, les deux films racontent les histoires de Kaisa, la grand-mère skolt de Gauriloff, et de Santra, la dernière barde carélienne. L’article s’intéresse à la recherche de la langue et de l’identité, la question de l’intimité à une langue ancestrale mineure et aux récits alternatifs qui lui sont attachés, ainsi que l’héritage et le renouveau induits par le passage du poème au film.
Our identity as architects is still bound with the image of nature that places architecture and other human constructs strictly outside of a “wild” nature that is pure, vibrant, and untamed. This has resulted in nostalgic, exclusionary eco-narratives that curtail the architectural imagination. Understanding our role as part of an evolving ecology and its omnipresent human influence has the potential to rein¬vigorate the practice. Coexisting as interdependent entities (both physical and conceptual), landscape and technology can define built form that imagines productive and healthy infrastructures for a collective ecology. This paper describes the first of a set of studios run by the University at Buffalo School of Architecture and Planning Ecological Practices Graduate Research Group, its collabora¬tion with a parallel techniques course, and a local partner and the design build project it initiated, Silo City Trellis. The studio explored how to formulate an eco-centric identity through small scale architectural interventions, garden struc¬tures that literally and figuratively entwine themselves with the local ecology of a site that is at once a burgeoning “urban wild” and a monument to the city’s post-industrial heritage. This apparently wild site is in fact a garden. Maintained and curated, it highlights the effort it takes to maintain a “natu¬ral” environment in the highly synthetic urban context. The architecture of the garden makes it into an interface where the boundaries between nature and the man-made are perpetually negotiated providing a pedagogical model that proposes alternative ideologies about our ecosystems-both environmental and socio-political. Silo City Trellis is a combined structure and landscape regen¬eration system that literally entwines architecture earth and vegetation. Emulating the work of the site’s Director of Ecology the growing infrastructure aims to suggest ecocentric solutions for the future of cities by pushing the boundaries of architecture as a provider of ecosystem services and social stewardship. The proposal envisions that in a post-nature environment architecture can play a role not only in societal enlightenment but also in the intentional cultivation and stewardship of biological ecologies.
Anthroposcreens frames the 'climate unconscious' as a reading strategy for film and television productions during the Anthropocene. Drawing attention to the affects of climate change and the broader environmental damage of the Anthropocene, this study mobilizes its frame in concert with other tools from cultural and film studies—such as debates over Black representation—to provide readings of the underlying environmental themes in Black American and Norwegian screen texts. These bodies of work provide a useful counterpoint to the dominance of white Anglo-American stories in cli-fi while also ranging beyond the boundaries of the cli-fi genre to show how the climate unconscious lens functions in a broader set of texts. Working across film studies, cultural studies, Black studies, and the environmental humanities, Anthroposcreens establishes a cross-disciplinary reading strategy of the 'climate unconscious' for contemporary film and television productions. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Derry Girls (2018–present), Channel 4’s major success since Max and Paddy’s Road to Nowhere (2004), is a teen sitcom set in pre-ceasefire Northern Ireland which inevitably brings issues such as place and space to the fore by relying on teen drama tropes. This is particularly visible in “The Concert”, Derry Girls’ third episode in season two, directed by Michael Lennox and written Lisa McGee, an episode where the dominant tropes are those of a road movie but genuinely overturned upside down. Such a subversion will be directly connected to notions of space, identity and containment during the Troubles in the 1990s, as well as youth, gender, ethnicity and class divides.
“Troubling the Water: Hydro-imaginaries in Nordic Television Drama” discusses a selection of Nordic television series to consider how they employ Anthropocenic imagery to challenge the Nordic governments’ long-established attitude as sustainable and environment-friendly. Despite their different genres and aesthetic qualities these series share their concerns about the availability of clean water usually perceived as everlasting given the Nordic countries’ physical geographical features. The close reading of relevant fragments from various series allows to interrogate such uncritical understanding of water as a “passive” commodity to serve modern societies anthropogenic wants, rather than eco-social needs. The article particularly focuses on the last season of the Danish family drama The Legacy which explicitly engages with water as being central to issues of social justice as much as issues of environmental concern.
Gräns (Border, dir. Ali Abbasi, 2018 Svensk Filmdatabas. n.d. “Gräns. (2018).” Accessed 10 April 2020. http://www.svenskfilmdatabas.se/sv/item/?type=film&itemid=79508#crew [Google Scholar]) crosses geographical, generic, gendered, and speciated borders. It speaks to Nordic folkloric traditions and engages with Swedish socio-political issues. It also addresses broadly familiar concerns and draws on recognized genre conventions. Critical reception was polyphonic, demonstrating how much readings are produced within and delimited by specific geo-political contexts. In today’s Western world, some cultural perimeters are widened; others are trampled.
Avrupa’nın tek Yerli halkı olarak tanımlanan ve Fenno-İskandinavya’da Sapmi adı verilen bölgede yaşayan Samiler uzun yıllar yerleşimci toplumların baskısı altında yaşamış, ulus devletlerin kurulmasıyla toprakları İsveç, Norveç, Finlandiya ve Rusya sınırları arasında bölünmüştür. Yirminci yüzyılın ortalarına kadar devam eden medenileştirme adı altındaki asimilasyon süreci Sami halkına ve kültürüne büyük zarar vermiş, pek çok Sami’nin Yerli kültüründen utanç duymasına, kimliğini reddetmesine yol açmıştır. Küresel Yerli Hareketinin etkisiyle 70’lerde yükselen modern Sami hareketi ve kültürel canlandırma süreci, ulus devletlerin asimilasyon politikalarına son vermek için politik zeminde mücadele ederken kültürel belleği ve kimliği onarmayı amaçlamaktadır. Kültürel canlandırma sürecinin bir parçası olarak ortaya çıkan Sami sineması, ana akım medyada aşağılayıcı klişelerle temsil edilen Samilerin kimliklerine sahip çıkma, öykülerini ve tarihlerini kendi perspektiflerinden anlatma, temsillerin kontrolünü geri alma girişimidir. Çalışmada ele alınan birinci şahıs belgeselleri, resmi tarihin görmezden geldiği asimilasyon sürecini, ebeveynleri yatılı okul travmasına maruz kalmış kadın yönetmenlerin gözünden anlatır. Bu filmler, aile albümlerinin, arşiv belgelerinin, kişisel tanıklıkların birleştirilmesi yoluyla Sami kolektif belleğini onarır, karşı-anlatılar inşa ederler.
Based on a small scale research project in the Netherlands, this article discusses the obstacles that impede sustainable filmmaking in a country with a relatively small film industry. Despite attempts to create ecological awareness and generate behavioral change amongst film professionals in the early 2010s, Dutch filmmakers are reluctant to consider implementing sustainable solutions. To understand their reluctance better we conducted interviews with six film professionals who consider themselves environmentally aware and believe that the Dutch film industry should work in a more sustainable manner. From our respondents we learned that the reasons for not implementing green measures are manifold. The particular work culture and hierarchical structure that characterizes film production in the Netherlands are one reason why nobody takes responsibility for initiating green practices. Since professionals in all hierarchical layers attach great value to their reputation, they are afraid of damaging their status by asking for green solutions. Another problem that we identified is a hierarchically loaded communication gap. Our respondents had different expectations of who should make the first step, but it turned out that these expectations were never communicated. Ultimately, financial constraints and related time pressures are considered the biggest obstacles, since they result in standard routines and leave no room for thinking about new, sustainable ways of film production.
The development of sustainability strategies to mitigate the negative environmental impacts of film production exemplifies the global film industry's attempts to come to terms with the “public good” in the era of anthropogenically accelerated climate change. The study of screen media's complex relationship with environment has been dominated by a focus on media content. Discourse analysis has formed the object of previous studies of environmental management of the media. Planet Placement suggests that, at the very least, a different set of measurements for “success” of media products is required, and that government‐based and independent cultural agencies can assert a strong role in the environmental turn of media production and storytelling. The lack of content management policy arguably reflects the industry's hesitation to be seen by audiences as overly preachy or to be seen by the government as overtly political.
This paper examines the Siberian films by Anastasia Lapsui and Markku Lehmuskallio. It focuses on filmic means em-ployed in order to “film back” to outsider cinema. Applying film analysis as a method, it demonstrates how film form can be as political as content when used to give voice to Siberia indige-nous peoples and re-view earlier Soviet discourse of equality, integration and progress. It highlights two aesthetic strategies used by the filmmakers to “film back:” the re-appropriation of archival footage to rework the past and recredit indigenous in-dividuals; and the creation of a plural pseudo-autobiographical voice to break the Soviet monologue and embody the shared indigenous experience. Finally, it argues that looking at formal aspects helps to rethink our understanding of such notions as “talking back” and “shooting back,” often used indifferently, with the addition of the “filming back” concept, reserved to filmic issues.
Powieść Tadeusza Dołęgi-Mostowicza, a także jej dwie filmowe adaptacje (pierwsza – Michała Waszyńskiego z 1937 roku, a druga z 1981 roku w reż. Jerzego Hoffmana) są tekstami kultury popularnej, dlatego intrygujące poznawczo jest wydobycie nieoczywistych, bez wątpienia nie tylko uwarunkowanych estetycznie, relacji między środowiskiem naturalnym i człowiekiem. Autor artykułu analizuje i interpretuje film w reżyserii Michała Waszyńskiego. Podejście ekokrytyczne pozwala w ciekawym kontekście ujrzeć napięcie między fikcją filmową oraz rzeczywistością, a także między tzw. Polską nowoczesną i tradycyjną.
This chapter focuses on Out (2006, dir. Daniel Dencik) and Valrossarna (Walrus, 2006, dir. Kolbjörn Guwallius). The two short films analysed here employ the Øresund strait as a strong visual motif that intertwines with the social dramas—real and imagined—driving the main narratives. Both films feature characters that exist in peripheral spaces or are marginalised in various ways. Significant to this analysis is an understanding of how ideas and notions of the regioscape are compressed into short narratives, where the water, as a unifying visual motif, serves as a site that is at once liminal, indeterminate, and simultaneously imbricated with identity-building processes. Discourses about the maritime environment are vital to our understanding of culture in the region which is fundamentally built around (and across) a body of water that registers tensions between belonging and alienation.
This chapter introduces a brief history of the political geography of the Øresund strait that separates Denmark and Sweden. This is followed by an overview of the political and economic motivations for instituting a region with the construction of a fixed link since the 1990s, drawing on literature in urban planning and regional studies. The chapter outlines key developments in the post-bridge era, such as those related to the global refugee ‘crisis’ of 2015 which prompted border controls on the bridge as well as the identity crisis faced by administrators of the region leading up to the major rebrand and symbolic re-separation of the region. The second part of this chapter outlines the region’s film/media ecology (including policy, institutions, initiatives, and other actors) that has emerged since the formal announcement of the Øresund region. The transnational dimensions of the respective Danish and Swedish film policies will be discussed. Key actors in the cross-border film region are detailed, highlighting the role that screen-cultural policies play in promoting cross-border cultural production and representations of the transnational region, and that have both directly and indirectly influenced the production of the films analysed in this book.
This article examines which notions of nation and nationality are connected to the early pornographic film and how this, in turn, is connected to the production and distribution of early pornographic films. The article is primarily built on three unique Swedish court cases from 1922, 1932 and 1943, respectively, where illegal screenings of pornographic films were prosecuted, that is, long before the notion of ‘Swedish sin’ was created. By putting these three trials into a historical context, I am able to discuss how the pornographic genre is connected to nation and nationality through sexual geographies that included the ‘French film’, notions of German decadence as well as American immorality, although many of the films on trial were in fact Swedish made.
Despite the growing popularity of ecocriticism in avant-garde film studies, most publications in the field still downplay numerous links between experimental film practice, slow ecocinema and online nature videos. This remains in a striking contrast to the increasing potential of slow eco-media to offer viewers an alternative model of how to reflect on and interact with the natural environment and environmentalism-related issues on screen. Likewise, this paper puts four stylistically distinct works, ranging from selective, self-aware 16mm and digital experiments of individual artists to environmental 360-degree videos, in the context of slow eco-cinema and discusses the ways they engage with an environmentally conscious discourse through embodying a sense of the eerie. Even though they resist adopting an activist imperative, Aspect (Richardson, 2004), Nightfall (Benning, 2012) and two VR nature films, Walking in the Woods (2016) and the 360 degree video, Relaxing Walk in the Forest (2017), evoke the eerie in their meditative rendering of the forest land- and soundscape, seen as one of the key sites of environmental humanities, and consequently fit in with the broader context of slow and ecocinema. While all works encourage the practice of perceptual retraining, Nightfall and Aspect provide a psychically charged and emotive experience of landscape and nature videos offer a more complex form of an ecologically-oriented gaze through voyerism as well as the conflict between the virtual and the real.
Elina Hirvonen tarkastelee dokumenttielokuvassaan Kiehumispiste (2017) suomalaisten ja maahanmuuttajien monimutkaista suhdetta tunteiden ja subjektiivisuuden kautta. Analysoin tässä artikkelissa Kiehumispistettä yhdis-tämällä Susanna Helken ajattelua suomalaisen dokumenttielokuvan emotiivi-sesta käänteestä ja Slavoj Žižekin politiikan kulturalisaation teoriaa. Johdanto Tavoitteena ei ole yhteinen näkemys eikä toisen osapuolen mielipiteen tukahdut-taminen… Jos kaikki puhuvat ja kuuntelevat, niin kaikkien ymmärrys lisääntyy. (Marten 2017.) Tarkastelen tässä artikkelissa Elina Hirvosen dokumenttielokuvaa Kiehumis-piste (2017), joka käsittelee useita monimutkaisia 2010-luvun suomalaista yhteiskuntaa koskettavia poliittisia ja yhteiskunnallisia kysymyksiä. Kiehu-mispisteen lähestymistapa heijastaa suomalaisen nykydokumenttielokuvan laajempaa suuntausta, jossa tunteet nousevat tärkeämmäksi kuin poliittinen konteksti, tosiasiat tai analyysi. Perustelen tulkintani viittaamalla suomalaisen dokumenttielokuvantekijän ja-tutkijan Susanna Helken ja kulttuurifilosofi Slavoj Žižekin ajatteluun. Hel-ken (2016) mukaan on syytä tarkastella huolellisesti, miten poliittisia teemoja käsitellään ja mikä asema niille annetaan nykydokumenttielokuvissa. Tämä on tärkeää siksi, että samalla kun niin sanotun emotiivisen käänteen myötä henkilökohtaiset uskomukset, filosofiat ja elokuvantekijöiden ja heidän ku-vauskohteidensa identiteetit ovat nousseet dokumenttielokuvien keskiöön, yksilöiden kehittymiseen vaikuttavat kompleksiset poliittiset rakenteet ovat jääneet vähemmälle huomiolle. Viittaan myös Slavoj Žižekin politiikan kulturalisaatiota käsittelevään teoriaan (2007). Žižekin mukaan kyseessä on prosessi, jossa yksinkertaistetut kulttuuriset narratiivit korvaavat terävämmät rasismia ja etnistä marginali-saatiota koskevat poliittiset tutkimukset. Näkemykseni mukaan Helken ja
This article is an ecocritical reading of the Swedish television series Jordskott. I discuss the effects in the series produced by the combination of the Nordic Noir's style and narrative techniques with elements of other genres, especially Gothic horror. I argue that through the contemporary reworking of the centuries-old Nordic mythology, Jordskott demonstrates how the aggressive powers of nature in Gothic narratives can no more be conventionally explained by referring to the pagan, pre-Christian beliefs, but need to be reconceived in light of the relentless environmental devastation brought about by humankind. The link unveiled between natural ecology and cultural mythology allows the series to surpass the limitations of the regionally informed folkloric story and to evolve into an ecological cautionary tale of global significance.
One of the most striking genre conventions to emerge in Danish cinema in
recent years is the gangster motif. Replete with gritty social realism, urban decay,
and tribal warfare between different ethnic groups, these films reflect a growing
discontent in the Danish welfare state, particularly regarding multiculturalism and
inclusion. This article follows these trends from the mid-1990s, focusing specifically
on the themes of ethnic division in four films: Nicolas Winding Refn’s Pusher (1996), Michael Noer’s Nordvest (2013) [Northwest], Omar Shargawi’s Gå med fred, Jamil (2008) [Go With Peace, Jamil], and Michael Noer and Tobias Lindholm’s R (2010) [R: Hit First, Hit Hardest]. The article explores racial division in these films by examining how they reflect
or subvert cultural and political approaches towards diversity in Denmark over the
last two decades.
In this work, I analyze how three environmental documentary films from the Spanish-speaking world deal with two, often competing, demands: to address homegrown audiences while striving to participate in global conversations. I start with Cartoneros (2006), by Argentinean director Ernesto Livon-Grosman; then, I center my analysis on H2Omx (2014), by Mexican directors José Cohen and Lorenzo Hagerman; finally, I end with Stop! Rodando el cambio (2013), by Spanish directors Alba González de Molina and Blanca Ordóñez de Tena. Basing my analysis on a transdisciplinary conceptualization of “landscape,” I propose that, in order to address local spectators, the filmmakers behind these three documentaries have modified the iconography that has come to be expected from environmental documentaries in international circles. At the same time, they take advantage of factors that have propelled this subgenre around the world, such as the growing popularity of specialized film festivals and online streaming.
This paper has been published in Papers on Language and Literature (vol. 57, no. 1, 2021) under the title: "Slow Ecocinema, the Forest and the Eerie in Experimental Film and VR (360-degree) Nature Videos" and the full text is available here:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/350186386_Slow_Ecocinema_the_Forest_and_the_Eerie_in_Experimental_Film_and_VR_360-degree_Nature_Videos
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This paper discusses the evolution of slow experimental eco-cinema from selective, self-aware experiments of individual artists to environmental videos as well as analyzes how Emily Richardson’s Aspect (2004), James Benning’s Nightfall (2012) and selected online nature films rely on the Romantic sublime and the eerie in their meditative deconstruction of the featured forest land- and soundscape. Whereas Nightfall and nature videos pay homage to the Hudson River School’s tradition of sublime and luminist painting or Schrader’s transcendental style and Aspect draws on stylistic excess of non-verbal sublime cinema (Thompson, Bagatavicius), all works simultaneously embody a sense of the eerie, composed by “a failure of absence or by a failure of presence” (Fisher 60), and transcend Freud’s unheimlich through their preoccupation with questions of agency and the outside grounded in serenity and disengagement from mundane reality. Likewise, although Nightfall consists of a single 98-minute shot of the Sierra Nevada Mountains’ forest and “the real-time light changing from day to night” (Benning) and Aspect constitutes a 9-minute time-lapse footage of the Kings Wood and the shifting colour, light and shadow filmed over the period of one year, in both pictures the sublime and the eerie remain closely associated with the imagery and sound textures of the location they haunt, which entails a deeply persistent sense of suspense. Meanwhile, nature videos, which are typically digitalized, authorless, ubiquitous and situated within the visual culture of conservation movements (Lam 214), both offer an ecologically-oriented gaze and evoke the sublime and the eerie through voyerism as well as the conflict between the virtual and the real (Kamphof 261). This effect is also achieved by means of city symphony and structuralist documentary conventions, such as long, static, tripod-mounted digital camera shots, diegetic soundtrack (Nightfall, nature videos), long exposures on single film frazes or time-lapse (Aspect).
This article develops an ecocritical perspective on the ways Nordic film and television has addressed ethnic and racial diversity. Here we develop the term ‘ecotone’, a concept originating in environmental studies that characterizes the transitional space linking separate ecological communities. Focusing on the popular noir series Bron/Broen (The Bridge) (2011–18), Hannes Holm’s Swedish comedy En man som heter Ove (A Man Called Ove) (2015), the Norwegian teen drama Skam (Shame) (2015–17) and Ruben Östlund’s controversial film Play (2011), we claim that the ecotone, when adopted as a form of mediated intervention, allows us to interrogate the taken-for-granted ideological foundations of Nordic societies. This involves unpacking the representations of material culture and spatial interconnectedness that define immigrant Others in relation to their environment.
One of a growing group of television series that can be classified as climate fiction, Occupied takes as its premise a hostile political response to Norway’s sudden move towards energy transition. Occupied draws on the long tradition of the Norwegian occupation drama, while also resonating with contemporary tensions between Russia and its neighbours. Mobilizing familiar structures of feeling common to many cli-fi texts as well as recent news cycles, Occupied brings together the genre conventions of political thrillers, occupation dramas and extreme weather/disaster films. With its ensemble cast that explores the conflicting loyalties and personal stakes involved in the emerging crisis, the series portrays the complexities of its fictional petropolitics as a layered accumulation of historical and recent memory shot through with personal and political investments of every conceivable kind that premediate possible futures in the Anthropocene.
This chapter argues that we cannot divorce climate change from its economic drivers, taking in analysis of two unconventional sf films in the process: Franny Armstrong’s ‘sf documentary’ The Age of Stupid (2009) and Tarik Saleh’s fully animated sf Metropia (2009), which imagines the consequences for the EU when corporations begin to subsume the social functions of states. Despite their formal differences, both films present systemic critiques of Europe’s central role in forging the Anthropocene. Focus will then shift to the post-ecological disaster films Hell (Tim Fehlbaum 2011) and The Quiet Hour (Stéphanie Joalland 2014), wherein current anxieties pertaining to issues such as border control or economic crises are rendered moot by the complete collapse of European civilisation.
Saamelainen elokuvakulttuuri muotoutuvana ”verkostoelokuvana” Saamelaiset elokuvakulttuurit ovat yksi pohjoismaisen elokuvateollisuuden kehittyvistä haaroista. Myös viimeaikainen tutkimus (Mecsei 2015; Kääpä 2015) on korostanut kasvavaa kiinnostusta tämän pienen väestönosan elokuva- ja mediatuotantoihin. Pohjois-Norjan Kautokeinossa sijaitseva ISFI (International Sámi Film Institute) on tämän hetken suurin saamelainen mediaorganisaatio, joka tukee taloudellisesti ja materiaalisesti saamelaisia elokuvantekijöitä. Yhdessä pienempien tuotantoyhtiöiden kuten Bautafilmin ja alkuperäiskansojen elokuvakeskus Skábman kanssa ISFI tarjoaa nouseville tekijöille lisäksi yhteistyö- ja harjoittelumahdollisuuksia. Tämänkaltainen yhteistyö ilmentää alkuperäiskansojen elokuvakäytäntöjen transnationaalia ja -alueellista verkostoitumispotentiaalia.Pienten saamelaisten tuotantoyhtiöiden toiminnan analyysi auttaa ymmärtämään myös valtion avustusten merkitystä suhteessa saamelaisten itsemääräämisoikeuteen. Saamelaisyritykset pyrkivät vahvistamaan alueellisia kytköksiään ja niiden tähtäimenä on yhteinen saamelaisen median keskus. Pääosa niiden resursseista on kuitenkin lähtöisin erilaisilta pohjoismaisilta elokuvainstituuteilta. Tämä artikkeli tarkastelee saamelaista elokuvatuotantoa muotoutuvana ”verkostoelokuvana” Manuel Castellsin (1996) ja Marijke de Valckin (2007) näkökulmia soveltaen. Se osoittaa, miten verkostomainen yhteistyö tukee tämän nousevan elokuvakulttuurin autonomiaa.
Sámi Film Culture as an Emerging ‘Network Cinema’ The film cultures of the indigenous Sámi people are part of a developing branch of the Nordic film industries. Recent publications (Mecsei 2015; Kääpä 2015) highlight a growing interest in the film and media production of this small population. Currently, the International Sámi Film Institute (ISFI), based in the Kautokeino region of Northern Norway, represents the largest Sámi media organization, providing financial and material support for Sámi filmmakers. Additionally, the ISFI works with small-scale production companies like Bautafilm and Skábma – The Indigenous Peoples’ Film Centre in Finland, by providing training and other collaborative opportunities for aspiring practitioners at all levels. This collaborative work highlights both the transregional and transnational ‘networking’ potential of indigenous filmmaking practices. Analysing the workings of these small Sámi production companies also helps us to understand what role state support plays in Sámi self-determination. Although these Sámi companies are working to strengthen their regional communication links and form a collective Sámi media outlet, the bulk of their resources come from the respective Nordic film institutes. Drawing on the work of Manuel Castells (1996) and Marijke de Valck (2007), this article considers Sámi film production as part of an emerging ‘network cinema’, and looks at how network collaboration plays a complex, but nevertheless key role in the sovereignty of this emerging film culture.
Aldo Leopold’s land ethic outlines an ecological take on interconnectivity between humans and their ecosystemic presence—one that is characterised by reciprocal but unbalanced flow. Cinema has attempted to capture some of this flow. A cinematic version of the land ethic touches on a plethora of power games, from identity politics to governance of nations, where the land supports the sociopolitical arguments the films conduct. The majority of cinematic depictions of the land are utilitarian versions of the land ethic due to the limitations of their world views. In exploring these issues, I focus on two documentaries, Elemental (2013) and Not My Land (2011), to address the ways cinematic depictions aspire to work environmentally, but often fail to do so because of their inherent limitations. I will investigate the films in a transnational framework to situate land politics as a question of both local and global relevance, especially in terms of how they appropriate land for national narratives.
This chapter explores the interrelated dynamics of national cultural production and ecocinema, especially the ways in which combinations of transnational and ecological argumentation both enable and prohibit scope. It focuses on interviews with industry personnel from the main support organizations for documentaries in Finland as well as practitioners who have produced the films that are in focus in the case studies given. The chapter explores two particular relevant examples of globally oriented but nationally specific Finnish ecodocumentaries, Mika Koskinen's The Red Forest Hotel and Katja Gauriloff's Canned Dreams. Filmmakers and production personnel at YLE, Suomen elokuvasaatio (SES), and AVEK often emphasize the universal aspirations of Finnish cinema as explained throughout this chapter. This universal sense of resonance translates into an ecocosmopolitan ethos in the production of Finnish ecodocumentaries, with both terms (the “universal” and the “ecocosmopolitan”) helping to describe the ideological motivations underpinning the films.
This article explores the usefulness of Latin American philosopher Enrique Dussel's work for film-philosophy, as the field increasingly engages with a world of cinemas. The piece concludes with an analysis of two films with an ecological focus, Trolljegeren/Troll Hunter (2010) and The Hunter (2011). They are indicative of a much broader emerging trend in ecocinema that explores the interaction between humanity and the environment in relation to world history, and which does so by staging encounters between people and those ‘nonhuman’ aspects of the Earth excluded by coloniality/modernity (e.g. animals, animal-spirits, mythological creatures, shaman, the very Earth itself). The interdisciplinary concerns of this work place it at the intersection of the latest research into a world of cinemas (in particular the various moves to understand films beyond the national paradigm now increasingly labelled the ‘transnational turn’; alongside growing concerns with how cinema helps us engage with ecology); and the ne...
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