BART 92A14 - Asian Ecological Cinema: Perception, Affect, and the Poetics of Coexistence

The impact of human activity on the planet — and it’s devastating consequences defining the Anthropocene — is increasingly visible across the globe, from the wildfires of recent summers to coastal erosion, melting glaciers, and the disappearance of entire species. Living within the climate crisis is no longer a distant possibility but our shared present. In the face of such transformations, can the concepts inherited from modernity still offer us adequate ways of understanding the world? What is the role of affect and perception in exploring our relationship with the living? Which emotions now traverse us — and what potential might they hold for imagining new forms of coexistence? The workshop encourages an ecosomatic understanding of the image, bridging sensorial experience, critical reflection, and ecological awareness. Cinema becomes both a witness and a poetic response to the transformations of our world: from the slow violence of environmental change to the subtle interconnections between human and non-human life, moving images reveal how perception, affect, and ecology are deeply entangled. This workshop offers an incursion into environmental humanities and ecological aesthetics, viewed through the prism of East Asian cinema and philosophy. It explores how filmmakers such as Apichatpong Weerasethakul, Naomi Kawase, Tsai Ming-Liang, and Jia Zhangke express ecological consciousness through time, stillness, gesture, and atmosphere. Drawing on eco-feminism, animalist, the ontological turn, and the notion of interdependence, we will question how cinema reconfigures our ways of seeing and inhabiting the world. Organized as a space for dialogue and creation, the workshop alternates between film screenings, readings, discussions, and creative exercises. Students will be encouraged to produce short audiovisual reflections, exploring how cinema can become an ecosystem of perception — a living, breathing field of relations between bodies, matter, and the environment. Final projects may take the form of short films, essays, or hybrid audiovisual works, depending on each student’s background and interests.

At the end of the course, the student is expected to : 1°) Understand key concepts in environmental humanities, eco-aesthetics, and East Asian philosophies of nature (emptiness, interdependence, embodiment); 2°) Analyze how Asian filmmakers articulate ecological thinking through form, temporality, atmosphere, and gesture;

3°) Develop a critical awareness of the specific issues raised by these approaches from an eco-feminist and animalist perspective.

The workshop alternates between short lectures, film screenings, group discussions, and creative workshops.

To validate the course, the student is expected to pass the following assignments (at least three grades): 1°) Class participation and engagement – 30% Active participation in screenings, discussions, and group debates. Students are expected to contribute thoughtfully to class dialogue and respond critically to the readings and films presented. 2°) Reflective essay or analytical response – 30% A short written reflection (2–3 pages) analyzing one film, sequence, or theoretical text discussed in class, articulating how it expresses ecological and philosophical ideas (eco-feminism, interdependence, perception, etc.). 3°) Final creative project – 40% A short audiovisual or multimedia project (individual or collaborative) that explores ecological perception through cinematic form, gesture, or sound. Students will present their projects and a short artist statement during the final session.