Lectures for Future: ECO CINEMA Screening and Lecture by Bori Máté, MA
Being ecological, becoming more conscious about human activities on this planet, and examining the relationship between humans and non-humans are contemporary topical issues. On an (eco)philosophical level, they deal with existential issues of posthumanism by posing such questions as: What would a world without humans look like? How do things interconnect? How do we process the possibility of our own disappearance as a species?
On the level of global challenges, these issues deal with the effects of global warming, including the disappearance of the habitats of indigenous peoples, as a result of, for example, the massive destruction of the Amazonian rainforest, which not only has a long-lasting and irreversible effect on humans but also on wildlife at large. Although these matters concern our global experience, they are differently experienced due to the extremely unjust distribution of wealth, and a fundamentally dualistic and Eurocentric view (bolstered by certain political regimes) that helps maintain global hierarchies that divide the world into a Global North and a Global South. The present ecological crisis is intertwined with (and influenced by) economic systems, political leadership and social problems.
The upcoming film screening and lecture, “ECO CINEMA”—realized within the frameworks of the cross-university lecture series, Lectures for Future—aims to show short contemporary experimental documentaries made (more or less) between 2010 and 2020 and in different geographical areas by individual artists, as well as collectives. In accordance with Scott Mac Donald, these films can be thought of as examples of “eco-cinema,” as they maintain “new kinds of film experience” that establish “an alternative to conventional media-spectatorship and help nurture a more environmentally progressive mindset.” (MacDonald 2013:20) In a more general sense, they reflect on the entangled relationship between human existence and nature in its larger aspect, while thematically—through the themes of 1) global warming/climate catastrophe; 2) nuclear catastrophe; 3) pollution/extraction of natural resources; 4) “nature under attack”/ the effects of the Anthropocene—they can be connected to a sub-category of trauma theory called “eco-trauma.” On the whole, this program explores the possibilities of an “eco-trauma cinema” existing outside the conventions of mainstream or Hollywood cinema.
23 May 2022, 6:00 pm
Auditorium,Vordere Zollamtsstraße 7
1030 Wien