Introduction to the Special Section: The Nature in the Machine

Abstract

This special section offers a map of the relationship between cinema and what we call ‘the natural world’, recognizing the human as a mediating element of this articulation, while responding and reacting to the tendency towards anthropocentrism that is found in both film production and the plurality of critical approaches canonized in the context of film studies. Our aim is to promote a discussion of this problem without any specific focus on a time period, geographical provenance or genre. The six essays gathered here explore the heterogeneity and rich configurations that the natural has obtained throughout the history of cinema, in fiction, documentary, and hybrid forms, both in works that fit explicitly into the field of ecocriticism and in those that contain an ecological subtext that connotes an ecocinematic perspective.