Experimental Film Practice and the Biosphere

Experimental films are often concerned with the formal and material qualities of the medium. Such a “materialist” approach is recurrently framed in terms of a comment or critique on mainstream cinema. However, in contemporary experimental cinema posthumanism and new materialism have had a profound impact on the thinking and practice of moving image artists. Increasingly, practitioners have started to explore points of view beyond the human by focusing on subjects such as animals, plants, rocks, and energy transfer. Furthermore, a critical inquiry of the immanence of filmmaking as a process has gained traction, leading to more ecologically aware forms of practice. Instead of a utopian outlook such films attempt to deal with the complexities and contradictions of a perilous present. This chapter traces and investigates this shift from the medium specific to the ecologically aware by looking at a diversity of films and filmmakers who have contributed to this debate, either by developing new techniques or via the introduction of new concepts.