Limit cinema : transgression and the nonhuman in contemporary global film / Chelsea Birks.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Birks, Chelsea, author.

Series:

Thinking cinema ; v. 9.

Thinking cinema; volume 9

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Motion pictures--Philosophy.

Motion pictures.

Motion pictures--Social aspects.

Nature--Effect of human beings on.

Nature.

Physical Description:

xiv, 202 pages : illustrations (black and white) ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2021.

Summary:

"Limit Cinema explores how contemporary global cinema represents the relationship between humans and nature. During the 21st century this relationship has become increasingly fraught due to proliferating social and environmental crises; recent films from Lars von Trier's Melancholia (2011) to Apichatpong Weerasethakul's Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010) address these problems by reflecting or renegotiating the terms of our engagement with the natural world. In this spirit, this book proposes a new film philosophy for the Anthropocene. It argues that certain contemporary films attempt to transgress the limits of human experience, and that such 'limit cinema' has the potential to help us rethink our relationship with nature. Posing a new and timely alternative to the process philosophies that have become orthodox in the fields of film philosophy and ecocriticism, Limit Cinema revitalizes the philosophy of Georges Bataille and puts forward a new reading of his notion of transgression in the context of our current environmental crisis. To that end, Limit Cinema brings Bataille into conversation with more recent discussions in the humanities that seek less anthropocentric modes of thought, including posthumanism, speculative realism, and other theories associated with the nonhuman turn. The problems at stake are global in scale, and the book therefore engages with cinema from a range of national and cultural contexts. From Ben Wheatley's psychological thrillers to Nettie Wild's eco-documentaries, limit cinema pushes against the boundaries of thought and encourages an ethical engagement with perspectives beyond the human"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Machine generated contents note: The end of the world

Film theory, speculative realism and the nonhuman turn

Bataille, transgression, ecology

The impossible imperative

pt. 1 Objectivity

1. Sacrifice and the sacred in Apichatpong Weerasethakul and Ben Wheatley

Introduction

Wheatley, post-theology and the sacrifice of sacrifice

Paganism and British folk horror

Irrational violence in Kill List

Circularity in A Field in England

Ambivalent Apichatpong

Desublimating the sacred

Conclusion

2. Objectivity, speculative realism and the cinematic apparatus

Speculative realism and film theory

Objectivity and nature

Subjectivity and apparatus

pt. 2 Subjectivity

3. Eco-consciousness in Under the Skin and Nymphomaniac

Subjectivity and excess

Interiority and inner experience

Sex and transgression

Death and discontinuity

4. Limits of love in Grizzly Man and Koneline: Our Land Beautiful

Love for the real

`Warring simplifications' in Grizzly Man

The bears don't love you, Timothy (or do they?)

Herzog's romantic nihilism

Our mind/our land beautiful

Conclusion.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Birks, Chelsea, Limit cinema

ISBN:

9781501352867

1501352865

OCLC:

1155585143

Publisher Number:

40030780329