Slow Ecocinema, the Forest, and the Eerie in Experimental Film and VR Nature Videos

Boczkowska puts four stylistically distinct works, ranging from selective, self-aware 16mm and digital experiments of individual artists to environmental 360-degree videos, in the context of slow ecocinema and discusses the ways they engage with an environmentally conscious discourse through embodyi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPapers on language & literature Vol. 57; no. 1; pp. 27 - 115
Main Author Boczkowska, Kornelia
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Edwardsville Southern Illinois University 01.01.2021
Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville
Subjects
Activists
Aesthetics
Avant-garde
Cognition & reasoning
Consciousness
Criticism and interpretation
Ecocriticism
Experimental films
Forests and forestry
Interiority
Motion picture directors & producers
Nature
Perceptions
Plot (Narrative)
Poland
Portrayals
Soundscapes
Technology application
Traditions
Virtual reality
Poland
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Summary:Boczkowska puts four stylistically distinct works, ranging from selective, self-aware 16mm and digital experiments of individual artists to environmental 360-degree videos, in the context of slow ecocinema and discusses the ways they engage with an environmentally conscious discourse through embodying a sense of the eerie. Particularly, even though they resist adopting an activist imperative, Emily Richardson's Aspect, James Benning's Nightfall, and two VR nature films, Walking in the Woods and the 360-degree video, Relaxing Walk in the Forest, evoke the eerie in their meditative rendering of the forest land- and soundscape, seen as one of the key sites of environmental humanities, and consequently fit in with the broader trend of slow ecocinema. While all works encourage the practice of perceptual retraining, Nightfall and Aspect provide a psychically charged and emotive experience of landscape, and the nature videos offer a more complex form of an ecologically-oriented gaze through voyeurism as well as the conflict between the virtual and the real.
ISSN:0031-1294