i have been questioning narrative structure as a whole recently; my work in landscape architecture and ecology-inspired processes cannot support a linear narrative structure.
There is something that holds stronger for me when films let there be gaps, fragmentation, and not explaining or trying to fix narrative incongruities that make a stronger narrative and perhaps are in-line with ecological thought. I wonder what other work, allowing for more fragmentation/rupture in ecocinema, could do? These breaks may echo part of Susan’s paper on text in film?
One example I’ve seen now is Darwin’s Nightmare (thanks to John’s paper!). And this film helps move away from the damaging social constructs around ‘nature’ and helps us look to ecology, which does not keep capitalism or destruction apart from the everyday world of lakes, trees, animals, and it allows for multiple voices, and, very important for me, gets away from a first-person/hero narrative. And it severs the idea of health and being healthy from any idea of a “whole” place or body: “the lake is not dead.” To understand being healthy is about resiliency not being free from sickness.
My background is stronger in landscape design than film, and the above is very rare in design! Are there other ways this happens in film i am not aware of? Or texts that speak to this?