Edinburgh Film Seminar: Kim Knowles

The recent growth of eco cinema studies demonstrates a notable shift in the way that film is understood within the context of environmental destruction, climate change and the relationship between the human and the more-than-human. Film Studies, like most scholarly disciplines, has seen an explosion of interest in modes of ecological representation, yet one of the most fertile fields of creative activity - experimental filmmaking - is consistently overlooked.

In this presentation, Dr Knowles will briefly map out the contours of experimental cinema before outlining how it resonates particularly with strands of eco philosophy (Timothy Morton) and post humanism (Karen Barad, Rosi Braidotti). Her central argument is that non-narrative, non-conventional and poetic forms of moving image production are essential for thinking beyond the human in the realms of film aesthetics.

This talk will draw on a range of contemporary examples, including films by Daïchi Saïto, Alexandre Larose, Johann Lurf and Malena Szlam.

Kim Knowles is Senior Lecturer in Alternative and Experimental Film at Aberystwyth University. She leads the MA in Documentary Filmmaking: Landscape and Ecology and is Director of the Centre for Material Thinking. Her current research focuses on experimental film aesthetics in the context of non-human representation.

She has published widely on experimental cinema, including the monograph Experimental Film and Photochemical Practices (2020) and the edited collection The Palgrave Handbook of Experimental Cinema (2024). She is also co-editor (with Marion Schmid) of Cinematic Intermediality: Theory and Practice (2021).

Each semester, the Edinburgh Film Seminars bring a broad range of film academics and experts to the University of Edinburgh.

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