Scalar Aesthetics of Ecocinema: The Wall and The Survivalist

Roberdeau, Wood. 2018. Scalar Aesthetics of Ecocinema: The Wall and The Survivalist. Transformations Journal of Media, Culture and Technology(32), [Article]

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Abstract or Description

This article concentrates on two twenty-first century examples of popular ‘ecocinema’ in order to ask what moving images accomplish when they take on the scale effects of the Anthropocene at the level of the domestic microcosm. Both Julian Pölsler’s The Wall (2012) and Stephen Fingleton’s The Survivalist (2015) provide ample territory through which to explore questions of cohabitation and encounter, human and non-human animality, as well as the threatening but liberating qualities associated with communicating disaster, sustainability, and responsibility for ‘end times’. Significantly, spatial and temporal delimitation is a theme common to both films and so a theoretical framework is established using examples of twentieth-century Continental Philosophy associated with the concept of ‘dwelling’. Heidegger’s investment in rootedness and belonging is read in conjunction with Levinas’s ethics of relationality and otherness; Derrida’s study of hostility embedded in hospitality and the spatial category of the ‘threshold’ are of equal importance to analysis. Not to be ignored is the eco-feminist stance that each film demands in surprisingly.

Item Type:

Article

Keywords:

aesthetics, cohabitations, eco-deconstruction, eco-feminism, eco-psychology, film studies, Julian Pölsler, The Wall (2012), Stephen Fingleton, The Survivalist (2015)

Related URLs:

Departments, Centres and Research Units:

Visual Cultures

Dates:

DateEvent
25 September 2018Accepted
19 November 2018Published

Item ID:

24525

Date Deposited:

11 Oct 2018 10:48

Last Modified:

29 Apr 2020 16:54

Peer Reviewed:

Yes, this version has been peer-reviewed.

URI:

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/24525

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