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Book Ecology and Popular Film

Download or read book Ecology and Popular Film written by Robin L. Murray and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2009-01-08 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ecocritical takes on popular film.

Book Screening Nature

Download or read book Screening Nature written by Anat Pick and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2013-11-01 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Environmentalism and ecology are areas of rapid growth in academia and society at large. Screening Nature is the first comprehensive work that groups together the wide range of concerns in the field of cinema and the environment, and what could be termed “posthuman cinema.” It comprises key readings that highlight the centrality of nature and nonhuman animals to the cinematic medium, and to the language and institution of film. The book offers a fresh and timely intervention into contemporary film theory through a focus on the nonhuman environment as principal register in many filmic texts. Screening Nature offers an extensive resource for teachers, undergraduate students, and more advanced scholars on the intersections between the natural world and the worlds of film. It emphasizes the cross-cultural and geographically diverse relevance of the topic of cinema ecology.

Book That s All Folks

    Book Details:
  • Author : Robin L. Murray
  • Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
  • Release : 2011-12-01
  • ISBN : 0803235127
  • Pages : 295 pages

Download or read book That s All Folks written by Robin L. Murray and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2011-12-01 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Examines animated films in the cultural and historical context of environmental movements"--Provided by publisher.

Book Film  Environment  Comedy

Download or read book Film Environment Comedy written by Robin L. Murray and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2022-05-23 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the transformative power of comedy to help connect a wider audience to films that explore environmental concerns and issues. This book offers a space in which to explore the complex ways environmental comedies present their eco-arguments. With an organizational structure that reveals the evolution of both eco-comedy films and theoretical approaches, this book project aims to fill a gap in ecocinema scholarship. It does so by exploring three sections arranged to highlight the breadth of eco-comedy: I. Comic Genres and the Green World: Pastoral, Anti-Pastoral, and Post-Pastoral Visions; II. Laughter, Eco-Heroes, and Evolutionary Narratives of Consumption; and III. Environmental Nostalgia, Fuel, and the Carnivalesque. Examining everything from Hollywood classics, Oscar winners, and animation to independent and international films, Murray and Heumann exemplify how the use of comedy can expose and amplify environmental issues to a wider audience than more traditional ecocinema genres and can help provide a path towards positive action and change. Ideal for students and scholars of film studies, ecocriticism, and environmental studies, especially those with a particular interest in ecocinema and/or ecocritical readings of popular films.

Book Gunfight at the Eco Corral

    Book Details:
  • Author : Robin L. Murray
  • Publisher : University of Oklahoma Press
  • Release : 2012-10-01
  • ISBN : 0806187379
  • Pages : 274 pages

Download or read book Gunfight at the Eco Corral written by Robin L. Murray and published by University of Oklahoma Press. This book was released on 2012-10-01 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Most film critics point to classic conflicts—good versus evil, right versus wrong, civilization versus savagery—as defining themes of the American Western. In this provocative examination of Westerns from Tumbleweeds (1925) to Rango (2011), Robin L. Murray and Joseph K. Heumann argue for a more expansive view that moves beyond traditional conflicts to encompass environmental themes and struggles. The environment, after all, is the fundamental stage for most western stories, from land rush dramas that pit “sod busters” against ranchers to conflicts between mining-town communities and corporations. Because environmental issues lie at the forefront of so many conflicts today, Murray and Heumann believe that the Western is ripe for such new examination. Drawing on perspectives from both film studies and environmental history, the authors show how western films frequently deal with issues related to land use and different ways of looking at the natural world. In films as diverse as Gene Autry musicals, early John Wayne B-Westerns, and revisionist critiques such as the 2010 remake of True Grit, resources are exploited in the name of progress. Beginning with an analysis of two iconic Westerns, Shane and The Searchers, Murray and Heumann identify the environmental dichotomies—previously overlooked by critics—that are broached in both films, and they clarify the history that lies behind the environmental debates in these films and many others. How do Westerns respond to the historical contexts they present? And what do those responses suggest about American views of nature and its exploitation? The conflicts these movies address grow out of differing views of progress, frequently in relation to technology. The authors show that such binary oppositions tend to blur when examined closely, demonstrating that environmental issues are often more complex than we realize.

Book Who Will Save the Planet

Download or read book Who Will Save the Planet written by Peter McLennan and published by Peter McLennan. This book was released on 2012-04 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fourteen-year-old Jason can’t work out how to get climate change fixed—until he saves the life of the mysterious and powerful Graham. Graham promises a reward, and Jason asks him to do something to stop climate change. The request is caught by the media, so Jason thinks the man’s trapped and has to keep his word. But Graham’s got other ideas. Jason’s got a fight on his hands.

Book Framing the World

    Book Details:
  • Author : Paula Willoquet-Maricondi
  • Publisher : University of Virginia Press
  • Release : 2010-08-06
  • ISBN : 0813930057
  • Pages : 280 pages

Download or read book Framing the World written by Paula Willoquet-Maricondi and published by University of Virginia Press. This book was released on 2010-08-06 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: films. --Book Jacket.

Book Italian Ecocinema

    Book Details:
  • Author : Elena Past
  • Publisher : Indiana University Press
  • Release : 2019-01-09
  • ISBN : 0253039495
  • Pages : 236 pages

Download or read book Italian Ecocinema written by Elena Past and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2019-01-09 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ecocriticism and film studies unite in this examination of five Italian films and the environmental questions they raise. Entangled in the hybrid fields of ecomedia studies and material ecocriticism, Elena Past examines five Italian films shot on location and ponders the complex relationships that the production crews developed with the filming locations and the nonhuman cast members. She uses these films—Red Desert (1964), The Winds Blows Round (2005), Gomorrah (2008), Le quattro volte (2010), and Return to the Aeolian Islands (2010)—as case studies to explore pressing environmental questions such as cinema’s dependence on hydrocarbons, the toxic waste crisis in the region of Campania, and our reliance on the nonhuman world. Dynamic and unexpected actors emerge as the subjects of each chapter: playful goats, erupting volcanoes, airborne dust particles, fluid petroleum, and even the sound of silence. Based on interviews with crew members and close readings of the films themselves, Italian Ecocinema Beyond the Human theorizes how filmmaking practice—from sound recording to location scouting to managing a production—helps uncover cinema’s ecological footprint and its potential to open new perspectives on the nonhuman world. “[Past] uniquely and innovatively combines film studies and material ecocriticism with a focus on Italy. Such weaving of tales brings the films to life and reads them as ecological documents and Italian stories.” —Heather I. Sullivan, author of The Intercontextuality of Self and Nature in Ludwig Tieck’s Early Works “A timely and incisive study that interrogates a new, though growing, trend in film criticism and makes an important and rich contribution to Italian film studies, Italian cultural studies, and ecocriticism.” —Bernadette Luciano, author (with Susanna Scarparo) of Reframing Italy: New Trends in Italian Women’s Filmmaking “Part memoir, part close analysis of the films themselves, and illustrated with numerous excellent frame grabs, Past’s book casts a dreamlike spell as it contemplates the past, present, and future of the cinema and moves smoothly between environmental issues and aesthetic and practical concerns.” —Choice

Book Ecological Film Theory and Psychoanalysis

Download or read book Ecological Film Theory and Psychoanalysis written by Robert Geal and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-07-13 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book applies ecolinguistics and psychoanalysis to explore how films fictionalising environmental disasters provide spectacular warnings against the dangers of environmental apocalypse, while highlighting that even these apparently environmentally friendly films can still facilitate problematic real-world changes in how people treat the environment. Ecological Film Theory and Psychoanalysis argues that these films exploit cinema's inherent Cartesian grammar to construct texts in which not only small groups of protagonist survivors, but also vicarious spectators, pleasurably transcend the fictionalised destruction. The ideological nature of the 'lifeboats' on which these survivors escape, moreover, is accompanied by additional elements that constitute contemporary Cartesian subjectivity, such as class and gender binaries, restored nuclear families, individual as opposed to social responsibilities for disasters, and so on. The book conducts extensive analyses of these processes, before considering alternative forms of filmmaking that might avoid the dangers of this existing form of storytelling. The book's new ecosophy and film theory establishes that Cartesian subjectivity is an environmentally destructive 'symptom' that everyday linguistic activities like watching films reinforce. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of film studies, literary studies (specifically ecocriticism), cultural studies, ecolinguistics, and ecosophy.

Book Film and Everyday Eco disasters

Download or read book Film and Everyday Eco disasters written by Robin L. Murray and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2014-06-01 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eco-disasters such as coal-mining accidents, oil spills, and food-borne diseases appear regularly in the news, making them seem nearly commonplace. These ecological crises highlight the continual tensions between human needs and the environmental impact these needs produce. Contemporary documentaries and feature films explore environmental-human conflicts by depicting the consequences of our overconsumption and dependence on nonrenewable energy. Film and Everyday Eco-disasters examines changing perspectives toward everyday eco-disasters as reflected in the work of filmmakers from the silent era forward, with an emphasis on recent films such as Dead Ahead, an HBO dramatization of the Exxon Valdez disaster; Total Recall, a science fiction action film highlighting oxygen as a commodity; The Devil Wears Prada, a comment on the fashion industry; and Food, Inc., a documentary interrogation of the food industry. The authors evaluate not only the success of these films as rhetorical arguments but also their rhetorical strategies. This interdisciplinary approach to film studies fuses cultural, economic, and literary critiques in articulating an approach to ecology that points to sustainable development as an alternative to resource exploitations and their associated everyday eco-disasters.

Book Lab Coats in Hollywood

    Book Details:
  • Author : David A. Kirby
  • Publisher : MIT Press
  • Release : 2011-02-04
  • ISBN : 0262294869
  • Pages : 280 pages

Download or read book Lab Coats in Hollywood written by David A. Kirby and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011-02-04 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How science consultants make movie science plausible, in films ranging from 2001: A Space Odyssey to Finding Nemo. Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, released in 1968, is perhaps the most scientifically accurate film ever produced. The film presented such a plausible, realistic vision of space flight that many moon hoax proponents believe that Kubrick staged the 1969 moon landing using the same studios and techniques. Kubrick's scientific verisimilitude in 2001 came courtesy of his science consultants—including two former NASA scientists—and the more than sixty-five companies, research organizations, and government agencies that offered technical advice. Although most filmmakers don't consult experts as extensively as Kubrick did, films ranging from A Beautiful Mind and Contact to Finding Nemo and The Hulk have achieved some degree of scientific credibility because of science consultants. In Lab Coats in Hollywood, David Kirby examines the interaction of science and cinema: how science consultants make movie science plausible, how filmmakers negotiate scientific accuracy within production constraints, and how movies affect popular perceptions of science. Drawing on interviews and archival material, Kirby examines such science consulting tasks as fact checking and shaping visual iconography. Kirby finds that cinema can influence science as well: Depictions of science in popular films can promote research agendas, stimulate technological development, and even stir citizens into political action.

Book Environmental Ethics and Film

Download or read book Environmental Ethics and Film written by Pat Brereton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-09-16 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Environmental ethics presents and defends a systematic and comprehensive account of the moral relation between human beings and their natural environment and assumes that human behaviour toward the natural world can and is governed by moral norms. In contemporary society, film has provided a powerful instrument for the moulding of such ethical attitudes. Through a close examination of the medium, Environmental Ethics and Film explores how historical ethical values can be re-imagined and re-constituted for more contemporary audiences. Building on an extensive back-catalogue of eco-film analysis, the author focuses on a diverse selection of contemporary films which target audiences’ ethical sensibilities in very different ways. Each chapter focuses on at least three close readings of films and documentaries, examining a wide range of environmental issues as they are illustrated across contemporary Hollywood films. This book is an invaluable resource for students and scholars of environmental communication, film studies, media and cultural studies, environmental philosophy and ethics.

Book Chinese Ecocinema

    Book Details:
  • Author : Sheldon H. Lu
  • Publisher : Hong Kong University Press
  • Release : 2009-12-01
  • ISBN : 9622090869
  • Pages : 384 pages

Download or read book Chinese Ecocinema written by Sheldon H. Lu and published by Hong Kong University Press. This book was released on 2009-12-01 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This anthology is a book-length study of China's ecosystem through the lens of cinema. Proposing 'ecocinema' as a new critical framework, the volume collectively investigates a wide range of urgent topics in today's world.

Book Ecology Documentaries

Download or read book Ecology Documentaries written by Susan Hayward and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-11-29 with total page 101 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This companion piece to Susan Hayward’s Film Ecology focuses on ecology documentaries produced in the first 20 years of the new millennium (2000–19). Using Kate Raworth’s regenerative economic theoretical model as set out in Doughnut Economics, this book examines 57 films emanating from Europe and the 4 areas of concern they raise about energy production, pollution and waste management, agribusiness, disrupted ecosystems and the migratory f low. These ecology documentaries make explicit the damage done to our planet thanks to growth capitalism and neoliberal globalisation. But they also provide the evidence that solutions to this planetary abuse exist. The book demonstrates how these documentaries reveal the process of humankind’s planetary plundering and explores the structuring of the eco-doc as a new generic type in the domain of documentary practice. Using Raworth’s model allows us to measure the tentacular extent of the planetary harm growth economics induces and, too, by way of contrast, perceive how regenerative economics can work to redress this harm, heal the Earth and make it a safe place for humanity. This book is ideal for film studies scholars and students, including those teaching or studying film practice, documentary film, European cinema and environmental studies, as well as economists interested in regenerative economic models. It also has general appeal to all who are concerned about some of the major causes of planetary degradation and its impact on humanity and Earth.

Book Landscape and the Environment in Hollywood Film

Download or read book Landscape and the Environment in Hollywood Film written by Ellen E. Moore and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-11-09 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book systematically explores how popular Hollywood film portrays environmental issues through various genres. In so doing, it reveals the influence exerted by media consolidation and the drive for profit on Hollywood’s portrayal of the natural landscape, which ultimately shapes how environmental problems and their solutions are presented to audiences. Analysis is framed by a consideration of how cultural studies can make more theoretical and practical room for environmental concern, thereby expanding its capacity for critical examination. The book begins by introducing the theoretical underpinning of the research as it relates to cultural studies, landscape, and genre. In the chapters that follow, each genre is taken in turn, starting with popular animated family films and progressing through spy thrillers, eco-thrillers, science fiction, Westerns, superhero films, and drama. This book is ideal for students and scholars in a variety of disciplines, including film, environmental studies, communication, political economy, and cultural studies.

Book Monstrous Nature

    Book Details:
  • Author : Robin L. Murray
  • Publisher : U of Nebraska Press
  • Release : 2016-10-01
  • ISBN : 0803285698
  • Pages : 268 pages

Download or read book Monstrous Nature written by Robin L. Murray and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2016-10-01 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 5. Zombie Evolution: A New World with or without Humans -- 6. Laughter and the Eco-horror Film: The Troma Solution -- 7. Parasite Evolution in the Eco- horror Film: When the Host Becomes the Monster -- PART 4: Gendered Landscapes and Monstrous Bodies -- 8. Gendering the Cannibal: Bodies and Landscapesin Feminist Cannibal Movies -- 9. American Mary and Body Modification: Nature and the Art of Change -- Conclusion: Monstrous Nature and the New Cli-Fi Cinema -- Filmography -- Notes -- Works Cited -- Index

Book Eco Trauma Cinema

Download or read book Eco Trauma Cinema written by Anil Narine and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-09-19 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Film has taken a powerful position alongside the global environmental movement, from didactic documentaries to the fantasy pleasures of commercial franchises. This book investigates in particular film’s complex role in representing ecological traumas. Eco-trauma cinema represents the harm we, as humans, inflict upon our natural surroundings, or the injuries we sustain from nature in its unforgiving iterations. The term encompasses both circumstances because these seemingly distinct instances of ecological harm are often related, and even symbiotic: the traumas we perpetuate in an ecosystem through pollution and unsustainable resource management inevitably return to harm us. Contributors to this volume engage with eco-trauma cinema in its three general forms: accounts of people who are traumatized by the natural world, narratives that represent people or social processes which traumatize the environment or its species, and stories that depict the aftermath of ecological catastrophe. The films they examine represent a central challenge of our age: to overcome our disavowal of environmental crises, to reflect on the unsavoury forces reshaping the planet's ecosystems, and to restructure the mechanisms responsible for the state of the earth.