Green Screens: Animal Anxieties
A series of screenings and discussions on ecology, environment and cinema.
This three-part program aims to explore anxieties surrounding human-animal relations, as depicted in 20th-century genre-fiction movies. We will watch and discuss three films together, each selected to represent specific anxieties expressed through cinema, either directly or metaphorically.
In our first screening, Becoming-Animal: The Fly (1986), we delve into the age-old fear of bodily transformation, exploring what it means to imagine ourselves devolving into lowly beasts. For our second screening, Fear the Swarm: The Birds (1963), we examine how anxieties surrounding “the masses”, in the context of the Cold War, influenced horror and sci-fi tropes related to swarms. Finally, with Creature Features: THEM! (1959), we focus on how oversized animals have been used in cinema to symbolise anxieties around harmful human activities, embodying fears of ecological backlash. Across the sessions, we will attempt to draw connections between the films and the intersecting ideas that they deal with.
>Friday 23rd Feb, 14:30—17:00
Becoming-Animal: The Fly (1986)
Dir. David Cronenberg
>Friday 1st March, 14:30—17:00
Fear of the Swarm: The Birds (1963)
Dir. Alfred Hitchcock
>Friday 8th March, 14:30—17:00
Creature Features: Them! (1959)
Dir. Gordon Douglas
Each session is open to all students, staff, graduates and friends of Sandberg and Rietveld.
Location: Auditorium, 3rd Floor, BC Building
Part of Rietveld Sandberg Research
Organised by Callum Copley, Sandberg alumnus and assistant researcher
Poster by Geke Zaal