| Summary: | Cinema is a record of the Anthropocene, and not just because it has recorded the changing planet. Celluloid is already embedded in the geological record. Bill Morrison’s film Dawson City: Frozen Time tells the story of how nitrate films were buried in the Yukon permafrost and unearthed decades later. Considered hazardous material, the nitrate film reels are also our cultural heritage. We can read the film as a lamentation that humanity and its culture are impermanent and its archives in jeopardy. But when we consider that so many films have been dumped, burned, and buried, we may be struck with the melancholic possibility that humanity and its culture will never disappear from the earth. In time, the human artifacts on the planet and the traces of humanity’s artificial life worlds will be the nature upon which future life forms create their worlds and rituals of hospitality.
|
|---|