Panels
FOREST AND LANDSCAPE
This panel focuses on landscapes such as forests, coastal regions, taiga and steppe. These sites that mediate cinematic concepts of nature will be discussed regarding their narrative function, their potential for reflecting nature as well as film in the face of extinction, and the proposal that the cinematic experience of nature generates new insights. The speakers are interested in possibilities, utopias, the fascination with nature and the negotiation of boundaries between humans, nature and cinema.
10:00: Which System? The Forest as Topical Counterspace in Historical and Contemporary Cinema
| Johannes Litschel (Freiburg)
10:45: Back to the Nature – The Cinematic Ecotopia of Extinction
| Katrin von Kap-herr (Potsdam)
11:25 – 11:40: Break
11:40: Between Humans and Nature in French and Scandinavian Silent Film
| Simone Winkler (Zürich)
| Film for the panel: Finis Terrae (FRI 20.5 / 20:30)
12:25: Akira Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzala or The Wind That Blows Tracks Away
| Tina Kaiser (Marburg)
| Film for the panel: Dersu Uzala (THU 19.5 / 20:00)
UTOPIAS/DYSTOPIAS OF THE ANTRHOPOCENE
This panel discusses film’s relationship to nature, climate change and the Anthropocene. The talks address the (im)possibilities of representing the Anthropocene on screen, the relation between the beauty of nature and film theory, aesthetic experience and ecological effects. The panellists discuss how nature mediated via cinematic illusion can stimulate reflection and explain how temporalities, modes of perception and ecological horizons of expectations change in cinematic worlds in the context of climate crisis.
10:00: Cinematic Field Research – Signatures of the Anthropocene
| Ulrike Wirth (Vienna)
10:45: Reflections on the Beauty of Nature in Film
| Julian Hanich (Groningen)
11:25 – 11:40: Break
11:40: Illusionary Aesthetic Natural Spaces between Spectacular and Revealing Gestures
| Jana Telscher (Berlin)
12:25: Lost Horizon – Climate Crisis and Cinematic Poetics of Non-analogue Futures
| Matthias Grotkopp (Berlin)
| Film for the panel: Night Moves (FRI 20.5 / 22:30)
MEDIA ECOLOGIES
The panel explores experiences of nature in terms of their media ecologies. The speakers discuss cross-species networks between humans and animals in interactive installations; since cinematic landscapes are artificially created, the talks call into question the relationship between nature on and beyond the screen. Other themes addressed include the affective potential of underwater footage in relation to (cinematic) technology, humans and animals, and the interplay of cultural experience, cinematic form and production conditions.
10:00: Virtual Environment(s): Nature Scenarios in Contemporary Media Art
| Cecilia Preiß (Karlsruhe)
10:45: Film Nature: Nature in Cinematic Dissolution: Or, the Abstract Ecology of Cinematic-Sensual Perception of Nature
| Philipp Blum (Zürich)
11:25 – 11:40: Break
11:40: Tentacular Encounters and Affective Attachments: Making Kin in The Octopus Teacher
| Angelica Fenner (Toronto)
| Talk in English
12:25: Cinematic Excess and (Un)Sustainable Ecologies in Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point
| Paolo Saporito (Cork)
| Talk in English