The research group Critical Inquiry hosts 'Green Screens: Xenoecologies', a series of screenings and discussions on ecology, environment and cinema, taking a closer look at imaginaries of ecologies from beyond Earth’s ecosystems.
Organised by Callum Copley, this programme of three screenings will explore the encounter between humans and alien Others and attempt to understand how cinematic depictions of these events betray deeper Western anxieties of “reverse colonisation”, contamination and replacement, to name a few. How have we perceived aliens and what imagined threat they pose? What fears about humanity’s own actions and the current state of Earth do we project onto these external, speculative lifeforms? During the series, we will view the selected films and, after, for those who wish to stick around, discuss their explicit ecological themes and subtexts.
Tuesday 25th April 17:30: Starship Troopers (1997)
For this first screening in the Xenoecologies series on Tuesday 25th April, we will be watching Starship Trooper (1997), directed by Paul Verhoeven. This science fiction cult classic (often overlooked as just another 90's Hollywood action movie) actually offers some interesting perspective with which to explore Western anxieties of reverse colonisation, through both its explicit satirical segments and a deeper reading of the movie as a text. So please, come along, watch a film and for those who feel like it — stick around for a beer and a chat afterwards.
Tuesday 9th May 17:30: Prospect (2018)
In this session, we will watch Prospect (2018), a low-budget (big impact) science fiction film directed by Zeek Earl & Chris Caldwell. This coming-of-age story follows a teenage girl on a toxic alien planet as she and her father hunt for precious materials, aiming to strike it rich. We will look at the ways in which the hostile ecology of the world in the film might inform how we view our own planet today, and explore how the logic of extraction and exploitation are transplanted on to a new environment, far beyond Earth.
Tuesday 16th May 17:30: Invasion of the body snatchers (1978)
In this session, we will watch Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), a science fiction film directed by Philip Kaufman. This remake of the 1965 classic sci-fi film (itself based on a novel from the year prior) involves a San Francisco health inspector and his colleague who discover that alien duplicates are replacing humans; each a perfect copy of the person replaced but devoid of human emotion. Among many other themes, this psychological drama is a lamentation for the end of the counterculture of the 1960s, and uses invading alien ecologies (xeno-mono-cultures) as a vehicle to explore such ideas. The film is wrought with the paranoia and anxieties that pervaded the USA at this time (during the height of the cold war), and as such, explores this notion of an "invisible enemy at home", albeit in the form of gelatinous creatures that take the form of small pods with pink flowers.
Location: Auditorium, 3rd Floor, Sandberg BC Building.
Open to students, staff, graduates and friends.
Join us for an evening of screenings and discussions on ecology, environment and cinema.