University of Exeter Press
Nonhuman Cinema
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In an era defined by environmental crisis, artificial intelligence, and multispecies interdependence, what happens if we continue to ignore crucial nonhuman relationships that weigh so significantly on the future of the planet? Nonhuman Cinema explores how film can destabilize anthropocentrism and help us see and think beyond the human. In doing so, it defines what a nonhuman cinema might look like—its parameters, major characteristics, goals, and significance.
Bringing together leading scholars and filmmakers, this book introduces a new framework for understanding film as a site of entanglement between humans, animals, aliens, ecosystems, cyborgs, machines, galaxies and the natural world. It examines how films can decentre the human gaze, disrupt anthropocentric narratives, undermine ontological categories, and immerse viewers in unfamiliar territories, temporalities and sensoria. Importantly, it also asks what happens when cinema itself becomes nonhuman: when the camera is no longer viewed as an instrument of human vision but as a participant in the world’s material and sensory life.
Written and edited by individuals at the forefront of film and media theory, Nonhuman Cinema offers an original and vital intervention in contemporary thought. It will appeal to readers interested in film studies, media, philosophy, new materialism, environmental humanities, feminism, queer theory, art history, and to anyone curious about how cinema can help us rethink what ‘human’ really means in the twenty-first century.
Introduction. New Approaches to Film and the Nonhuman. Barbara Creed and Cristóbal Escobar
PART ONE
Introduction. EcoCinema, Nature and the Anthroprocene Barbara Creed and Cristóbal Escobar
Chapter 1. More-than-human Visualities in Recent Palestinian Film and Video Anat Pick
Chapter 2. The Sensuous Appeal of Mountains in Film Vincent Deville
Chapter 3. Screening Nature: Landscape and Ecocentrism in the Films of Michael Snow and James Benning Jelena Miseljic
Chapter 4. Night Skies: Star-gazing as proto-cinema Sean Cubitt
PART TWO
Introduction, Interspecies Encounters of the Nonhuman Kind Barbara Creed and Cristóbal Escobar
Chapter 5. A Silent Anarchist Bestiary in Early Cinema Alice Leroy
Chapter 6. Space, Time, and Agency: Non/Human Entanglements in Alex Garland’s Annihilation Zina Giannopoulou
Chapter 7. Interspecies Encounters: Valdimar Jóhannsson's Lamb and the Impure Ontologies Inhabiting the Anthropocene Luis Barboza
PART THREE
Introduction. ‘Remains of the Day’: Eating the Human Barbara Creed and Cristóbal Escobar
Chapter 8. Displacement on the Butcher’s Block Des Bellamy
Chapter 9. Part of the Feast: NBC’s Hannibal as Plumwoodian Narrative Ivana Brehas
PART FOUR
Introduction. Queering Anthropocentrism Barbara Creed and Cristóbal Escobar
Chapter 10. Stray Ethics & Queer Becomings: My Octopus Teacher Barbara Creed
Chapter 11. (Trans)ending the Body: Queering Fatherhood in Julia Ducournau’s Titane Iliana Cuellar
Chapter 12. Fuse Box: How the Television Set Interlaces Queer Bodies in Horror Cinema Claire Henry
PART FIVE
Introduction. Screening a Nonhuman Sensorium Barbara Creed and Cristóbal Escobar
Chapter 13. Skin and shadows: spirited materialism in Liang Luscombe’s evocation of the ghostly feminine Tessa Laird
Chapter 14. Films to Make a World of Many Worlds: Sensoriality, Wonder and Gaps of Knowledge to Show the Pluriverse Clara Kleninger-Wanik
Chapter 15. Exteriority and Ambiguity. On Pedro Costa's Cavalo Dinheiro and Vitalina Varela Reinhold Görling