Supposing that the religious leader in the short story Borges (1940) detests mirror (as well as fornication) because it multiplies the number of humans, what would they say about film and camera? Through recording, film multiplies humans and immortalizes them. Through duplication and distribution, it even increases its number. From early on in its creation, the film camera has followed in the footsteps of humans to “increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it”, with its impacts on the geological age now widely called Anthropocene.
Whether under the pretext of scientific, aesthetic, journalistic, or industrial exploration, the Anthropocene broadened with camera movement extensions that record and document remote corners of the world. Ziegler-Fiala expedition in 1902 brought cameras through their journey to the North Pole, becoming the first National Geographic Society documentary and every recording is undoubtedly an invite for the next. So, over a hundred years later, in a place far from the Arctic, Ko Phi Phi Leh, an island where Maya Bay Beach becomes the shooting location for The Beach (2000), must be closed due to over-tourism—the multiplication of humans triggered by cameras and films—that leads to nature destruction. In an era when the word ‘Instagrammable’ has not only entered the Cambridge Dictionary lemma but is also understood by people who do not even speak English fluently, every beautiful, amateurish footage from any phone camera is a chance for a new destruction of the earth.
However, it is also important to state here that not everyone agrees that the current massive destruction of nature is triggered by the majority of humans (anthro). In a recent discussion that I moderated, activist and physicist Vandana Shiva expressed her disagreement with the term anthropocene and argued that ‘capitalocene’ is a more accurate term to refer to the condition caused by greedy industrial capitalism merchants, who only consisted of a handful of humanity, not the majority.
Likewise, perhaps not all would agree that camera and film are an integral part of the destruction and expansion brought by the Anthropocene. Could films—especially documentaries—also contain redemptive power in its destructive effects? As a believer in the power of films, there is no other option for me than to believe in it. Through the films in this programme, hopefully, we can open our eyes and awareness to the Anthropocene on many aspects and impacts, also taking action.
Feeling the Apocalypse (Chen Sing Yap, 2022) animation captures the psyche of many people at this time, especially the youth, who perhaps have not been talked about much and too often disregarded as something ‘made-up’: stress and anxiety about the future does not come from the economy and employment uncertainty but the environment uncertainty as a result of the Anthropocene era. The anxiety of world destruction and the self-position (humans) in it made them feel powerless and useless.
Filled with deep conversation, frequently philosophic, between a hunter, a veterinarian, and a nurse in the middle of an operation session for a wild deer in a protected forest area. The discourse in the film L’Ombra di Rasputin (Pietro Francesco Pingitore, 2023) disrupts our perception of the meaning of wild nature. Is what we call natural truly not artificial? If so, where should we draw the line? Students of political ecology will remember Paul Robbins’s statement, “[T]he environments around us, including and especially those composed of non-humans, are clearly produced. Forests are produced as much as factories…” (Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction, 2012). Humans remain as the central actors that cannot be separated from their natural surroundings, and the Anthropocene confirms that even the so-called wildest nature, either directly or indirectly, contains traces of human civilisation.
RITUAL, Part IV: The Blends (Robby Ocktavian, 2022) captures the intersected discourse of Samarinda and Mahakam River from various stakeholders, though, in the end, those views must submit to the main interests of state-bureaucracy/capitalism-industry that expand the city into the backwoods and leaving it chaotic. A relevant film to critically see the mega-project that is being rushed through in a region not too far from Samarinda.
We could see the crushing impact of state-bureaucracy/capitalism-industry interests and other tragic consequences in Yarokamena (Andrés Jurado, 2022), a rambling speech of the Uitato indigenous community elders about the resistance to the colonialism-capitalism rubber plantation in Casa Arana, Colombia. A bloody clash of the Anthropocene project in the middle of ruins of modern houses and abandoned dish antennas: between the idea of human as the master of nature who wants to exploit all of its resources with the belief of human as a small part of nature living in harmony with its rhythm.
The Secret Garden (Nours Ouayda, 2023) is an imaginative exploration of the human’s position in the Anthropocene: they are central as the bearer of the first-person narrative but also turn out to be powerless (invisible) when their surrounding world feels like it’s bearing down on them. Constructed from hundreds of common vegetation photos around us, this film invites us to see the close as distant, as well as the often ignored, as something fantastic worthy of further attention and admiration. When nature seeks to reclaim its dominance over the city through a spread of new species, what could be done by humans?
— Ronny Agustinus
Programmer
