FILM 80E: Eco-Media

University of California, Santa Cruz

Long extinct species coming back to life from melting ice caps, humanity seeking refuge in manmade ecologies, and extreme weather events ravaging global landscapes. These all belong to the ecological imaginary of 21st century cinema/media. With the aid of new technologies and CGI, films increasingly stretch the boundaries of cinematic time and space across deep pasts, vast futures, and previously unmappable territories in order to project visions of humanity under constant threat by factors of its own making. This course explores what we can learn about human-nature relations and environmental concerns from moving images, differently from other disciplines. While the focus is mostly on eco-cinema, course also looks at broader eco-media and our ways of knowing the world.