From Fitzcarraldo to Fantastic Fungi, District 9 to My Octopus Teacher - some great green movies (and more) curated by Uneven Earth
We appreciate a good act of cultural curation - and we found a great one in the latest Uneven Earth newsletter, from their “summer readings”.
Above is a slideshow of images grabbed from a Letterboxd site, which has curated a whole load of films that illustrate the theme of political ecology. A definition from Wikipedia:
Political ecology is the study of the relationships between political, economic and social factors with environmental issues and changes. Political ecology differs from apolitical ecological studies by politicizing environmental issues and phenomena.
The academic discipline offers wide-ranging studies integrating ecological social sciences with political economy[1] in topics such as degradation and marginalization, environmental conflict, conservation and control, and environmental identities and social movements.[2]
We love the selections that “PeachyFlorals” has made here - everything from Fitzcarraldo to Fantastic Fungi, District 9 to My Octopus Teacher. Each Letterboxd entry also has very useful links to where you can see these movies on streaming or download services. Feels like a great tool for gathering sensibilities around issues.
There’s much more in the Uneven Earth summer reading newsletter - we recommend you subscribe, but here’s some highlights below:
On private jets: A 17-minute flight? The super-rich who have ‘absolute disregard for the planet’. Also: The celebs who have racked up the most CO2 emissions this year using their private jets, a Twitter thread, and an in-depth report: Private jets: can the super-rich supercharge zero-emission aviation?
The imperial core of the climate crisis and Transcending the ‘imperial mode of living’
Revealed: oil sector’s ‘staggering’ $3bn-a-day profits for last 50 years. Vast sums provide power to ‘buy every politician’ and delay action on climate crisis, says expert.
Big Oil has known for decades that carbon capture isn’t a solution
Europe is frying in devastating heat, yet is burning more coal
Raj Patel on agroecology, reparative approaches, and land reform
NFT scams, toxic ‘mines’ and lost life savings: the cryptocurrency dream is fading fast. Yet… ‘The casino beckons’: my journey inside the cryptosphere. Not all cryptocurrency investors fit the cliches. Many are people looking to somehow claw their way out of a life of constant struggle.
The case for climate reparations is now irrefutable
Air pollution kills 10 million people a year. Why do we accept that as normal?
The Global South has the power to force radical climate action. After all, Western economies – and their economic growth – depend utterly on labour and resources from the South.
This pioneering economist says our obsession with growth must end. “It’s a false assumption,” argues Herman Daly, “to say that growth is increasing the standard of living in the present world”… and No, let’s not call it something else
I wanted to share a bit about how amazing yet simple Barcelona’s Superblocks are, and Barcelona school and residents create solar energy community
Land power. Sustaining a community land trust requires radical commitment to housing justice and local self-determination — not to mention real estate savvy and political diplomacy.
‘The beaches belong to the people’: inside Puerto Rico’s anti-gentrification protests
Here’s why a border-free world would be better than hostile immigration policies
A little bit of African thinking. The profound influence, often underplayed, that great African revolutionary Amílcar Cabral had on Brazilian educator and philosopher Paulo Freire.
Can an artists’ collective in Africa repair a colonial legacy?