Nature’s Underworld Film Series: Last Things (2022) and Animal Cinema (2017)

Name: Nature’s Underworld Film Series: Last Things (2022) and Animal Cinema (2017)
Start: 2024-12-05T18:00:00-05:00
Location: Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery

Schedule

Thu Dec 05 2024 at 06:00 pm

UTC-05:00

Location

Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery | Saratoga Springs, NY

Join us Thursday, December 5 (originally scheduled for November 21), at 6 pm, for a screening of Deborah Stratman’s 'Last Things' (2022, US/Portugal/France, 50 min., digital) and Emilio Vavarella’s 'Animal Cinema' (2017, US/Italy, 12 min., digital), which screens as part of our Nature’s Underworld Film Series, featuring nine films inspired by the exhibition 'Mark Dion and Alexis Rockman: Journey to Nature’s Underworld,' and our Whole Grain: Experiments in Film and Video program.
'Last Things' looks at evolution and extinction from the perspective of the rocks and minerals that came before humanity and will outlast us. With scientists and thinkers like Lynn Margulis and Marcia Bjørnerud as guides and quoting from the proto-Sci-fi texts of J.H. Rosny, artist Deborah Stratman offers a stunning array of images, from microscopic forms to vast landscapes, and seeks a picture of evolution without humans at the center.
“An entrancing blend of hard science and ephemeral existentialism.” – Michael Fox, KQED
“Stratman’s haunting, iridescent work of science-nonfiction actively decenters the human perspective, narrating the history and the speculative future of the universe with rocks as its protagonists.” – Devika Girish, Film Comment
Questioning the established hierarchies of anthropocentrism, Emilio Vavarella’s 'Animal Cinema' comprises video fragments of animals operating cameras, centering animalistic autonomy and agency. Moving between spaces both familiar and strange to the human viewer, the film’s non-human cinematographers bring us through forests, savannahs, national parks, and underwater spaces.
To explore more of this Whole Grain and the Nature's Underworld Film Series click here: https://tang.skidmore.edu/calendar/2361-natures-underworld-film-series-last-things-2022-and-animal-cinema-2017