[CFP] SCMS 2014 Panel: Ecocinema: critiques and rethinkings

Reposted from the SCMS Bulletin Board:

For this panel I would like to gather papers that have a critical take on ecocinema. I am not interested in readings of films from an “environmentalist” or “progressive and eco-friendly perspective”; I am not interested in papers that talk about the “positive” images and narratives about nature and the environment one finds in various films. Instead, I am looking for papers that critically explore the very idea of eco-cinema, that expose the unexamined presuppositions with which much eco-cinema can be seen to function: naive views of “nature” and what constitutes “the natural”; uncritical assumptions about the capacity of cinema or video or media to adequately represent nature; unexamined conceptions of what constitutes “progressive” or “environmentally friendly”; etc. I am also interested in papers that explore films that do self-consciously explore these issues and attempt to rethink both the project of environmental cinema/video/media and the environmental politics in which that cinema participates.

Please send proposals of about 300 words, as well as a brief bio, to me at cpavsek@sfu.ca by July 31.

Thanks,
Christopher Pavsek

Associate Professor of Film

Simon Fraser University