Unexpected Outcomes: Cinema and the Environment

In this selection of dramas, documentaries and animated films, the environment plays a central role, and human interaction with that environment often leads to unexpected outcomes. This series is intended compliment the exhibitions Imaging a Shattering Earth and Songs of Praise for the Heart Beyond Cure.

17 January The Red Desert

Michelangelo Antonioni, Italy, 1964, colour, 118 minutes. Industrial Northern Italy is the setting for Antonioni’s first colour film, starring Monica Vitti ias a mentally unstable woman alienated by extraordinarily ruined landscapes; the ennui and spiritual desolation of the film’s characters mirrors the toll taken by belching smokestacks and toxic spills.

24 January When The Wind Blows

Jimmy Murakami, Britain, 1987, 80 minutes. In this deeply affecting animated film adapted from Raymond Briggs’ cartoon book (with music by David Bowie and Roger Waters), a charmingly reserved British couple try to cope with the nuclear disaster unfolding around them. The result is a modern fable that is wholly devastating.

31 January The Plow That Breaks The Plains and The River

Pare Lorenz, USA, 1936 and 1937, 30 minutes each, black and white. Visionary American documentarian Pare Lorenz made these ground-breaking films in the 1930s in response to the dust-bowl conditions of the Depression. Using an epic style driven by Virgil Thompson’s extraordinary music, the films demonstrate an environmental sensitivity long before it was fashionable.

7 February Cane Toads: An Unnatural History

Mark Lewis, Australia, 1987, 48 minutes. The hilarious and disturbing story of how poisonous Hawaiian Cane Toads were imported to Australia to control beetles, and how they ignored the beetles and overran everything else. This cautionary environmental tale has become a cult film and must be seen to be believed.

14 February Dodes’Ka-Den

Akira Kurosawa, Japan, 1970, 140 minutes. The legendary Japanese filmmaker’s first colour film is a poignant  portrait of families living in a contemporary garbage dump, some of whom are literally driven mad by modern life. In a thoroughly disposable culture, Kurosawa’s characters have themselves been thrown away.

February 21st: Rivers and Tides

Thomas Riedelsheimer, Finland/Germany, 90 minutes, 2001. Partly shot in Nova Scotia, Rivers And Tides docements a more positive relationship to the natural environment through the work of Scottish-based artist Andy Goldsworthy. His landscape installations use ephemeral elements such as ice, leaves and driftwood that eventually return to a natural state.