Guest
February 14, 2024, at Akademie der Künste In the face of man-made climate crisis, today’s societies urgently need to transform themselves – and the world of film and festivals is no exception. To open Berlin Critics' Week 2024, we debated what sort of influence filmmakers, critics and journalists can, or should, have. How can artistic freedom be made compatible with the imperatives of sustainability? How industrial should the cinema of the future be? What political interventions seem necessary or meaningful? Introduction: Elfi Mikesch Keynote Lectures: T. J. Demos, Sara Schurmann Panel Discussion: Fee Buck, Ada Solomon, Cassandre Warnauts, Sara Schurmann, T. J. Demos Moderation: Nino Klingler Three years ago, in an open letter to the German press, journalist Sara Schurmann (Netzwerk Klimajournalismus Deutschland) called for climate justice to be made into an explicit topic for socio-political reporting. Since then, the situation has become even more acute. Climate change still compels all areas of society to (self-)critically scrutinize their respective relationships with consumption, production and growth. Over the past few years, the accumulated impact of public conversations, political initiatives and persistent activism from individual film professionals have helped prompt a paradigm shift on the part of companies, broadcasters and funding institutions. Meanwhile, a number of models for potential solutions have been developed for the film industry. We want to take stock of developments across a range of different countries so far – and to shed light on the production realities of companies and producers whose films are shaping the international festival scene. Our timely questions about climate-friendly cinema will not only be posed to the film industry; we will also be posing them to ourselves, as film critics. How does film culture need to change in light of ever-depleting planetary resources? Does there exist some kind of “green cinema” beyond greenwashing? Are festivals and film critics – with their focus on current new productions – propagating a pressure to innovate that ultimately damages the climate? Should politicians show more resolve in supporting smaller-scale films which don’t affect the planet so severely? Filmmakers and film critics alike need to adopt a position on these questions – and to take responsibility for their work in new ways. With our thematic focus FILMMAKING AGAINST ALL ODDS? – CINEMA, CRITICISM, CLIMATE CRISIS, we hoped to inject the perspectives of climate activists and climate movement pioneers into film culture, thereby thoroughly questioning the present and future of cinema with our guests. In doing so, we hoped to emphasize that public discussions on this topic remain vital. We were pleased to be joined by the art historian and cultural critic T. J. Demos, a professor in the History of Art and Visual Culture at UC Santa Cruz (UCSC) who also founded and directs the Center for Creative Ecologies based at UCSC; Demos’s work is specifically engaged with the interfaces between contemporary art, radical politics and political ecology. Two lectures from T. J. Demos and Sara Schurmann opened a debate at the Akademie der Künste (Pariser Platz). Together with the producers Ada Solomon (“Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn“, “Toni Erdmann“), Fee Buck (“Rabiye Kurnaz vs. George W. Bush“, “High Life“) and Cassandre Warnauts (“Titane“, “Girl“, “Atlantique“) and the journalist Sara Schurmann discussed topics like how the climate crisis influences the production of films today, what personal standards these producers are setting for their work in the wake of recent developments, and how they envisage the future of film production. © Woche der Kritik, VdFk e.V.
