Indigenous Ecocinema

Decolonizing Media Environments

Salma Monani

West Virginia University Press

Salvaging the Anthropocene

9781959000334

$26.99

Paperback

2024-12-01

Foregrounding the voices of Indigenous intellectuals, Monani reframes our popular and scholarly understandings of Indigenous cinema as discursively and materially entangled in the environment.

Introducing the concepts of d-ecocinema and d-ecocinema criticism, Monani expands the purview of ecocinema studies and not only brings attention to a thriving Indigenous cinema archive but also argues for a methodological approach that ushers Indigenous intellectual voices front and center in how we theorize this archive. Its case-study focus on Canada, particularly the work emanating from the imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival in Toronto—a nationally and internationally recognized hub in Indigenous cinema networks—provides insights into pan-Indigenous and Nation-specific contexts of Indigenous ecocinema.

This absorbing text is the first book-length exploration foregrounding the environmental dimensions of cinema made by Indigenous peoples, including a particularly fascinating discussion on how Indigenous cinema’s ecological entanglements are a crucial and complementary aspect of its agenda of decolonialism.

6.000in x 9.000in x 0.500in

Weight data not found for this book.

“Indigenous Ecocinema is a deeply considered, meticulously researched, and cogently reasoned text. Monani’s approach to Indigenous cinema is situated within multiple critical conversations while maintaining a clear and consistent original intervention. She engages cinema from a variety of angles, not limiting herself to the ‘text’ of the film itself, but also considering the filmmakers’ contexts as well as the influence of the venue and audience participating in the screening. I found this study to be compelling and exciting.”
— Amy Hamilton, author of Peregrinations: Walking in American Literature

“A much-needed addition to the fast-growing fields of Indigenous media and ecocinema studies. Well-written, with both substantive theoretical heft and, at the same time, a warm and inviting tone and a very readable style, the arguments Monani makes around issues of place, time, and affect comprise a compelling case for the centrality of Indigenous cinematic mediations of ecological consciousness.”
—Joanna Hearne, author of Native Recognition: Indigenous Cinema and the Western and Smoke Signals: Native Cinema Rising

190 Pages

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