While documentaries with themes of environmental activism date back at least to Pare Lorenz's films of the 1930's, no previous decade has produced the number and quality of films that engage environmental issues from an activist viewpoint. The convergence of high profile issues like climate change, fossil fuel depletion, animal abuse, and corporate malfeasance has combined with the miniaturization of high quality recording equipment and the expansion of documentary programming, to produce an unprecedented number of important and influential documentary productions. The Environmental Documentary provides the first detailed coverage of the most important environmental films of the decade, including their approach to their topics and their impacts on public opinion and political debate. The text will also examine the processes of production and distribution that have produced this explosion in documentaries. The films range from a high-profile Hollywood production with theatrical distribution likeAn Inconvenient Truth, to shorter independently produced films like The End of Suburbia, that have reached a small audience of activists through video distribution and word of mouth.

This is the first book-length study of environmental documentary filmmaking, offering an analysis of controversial and high-profile documentary films. With analyses that include the wider context of this filmmaking about local rural communities in Britain and Europe, this book also contributes to the ongoing debate on representing the crisis.

Environmental themes are present in cinema more than ever before. But the relationship between film and the natural world is a long and complex one, not reducible to issues such as climate change and pollution. This volume demonstrates how an awareness of natural features and dynamics can enhance our understanding of three key film-studies topics – narrative, genre, and national cinema. It does so by drawing on examples from a broad historical and geographical spectrum, including Sunrise, A River Called Titas, and Profound Desires of the Gods. The first introductory text on a topic which has long been overlooked in the discipline, Film and the Natural Environment argues that the nonhuman world can be understood not just as a theme but as a creative resource available to all filmmakers. It invites readers to consider some of the particular strengths and weaknesses of cinema as communicator of environmental phenomena, and collates ideas and passages from a range of critics and theorists who have contributed to our understanding of moving images and the natural world.

With an emphasis on photographic works that offer new perspectives on the history of American social documentary, this book considers a history of politically engaged photography that may serve as models for the representation of impending environmental injustices. Chris Balaschak examines histories of American photography, the environmental movement, as well as the industrial and postindustrial economic conditions of the United States in the 20th century. With particular attention to a material history of photography focused on the display and dissemination of documentary images through print media and exhibitions, the work considered places emphasis on the depiction of communities and places harmed by industrialized capitalism. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, visual studies, photography, ecocriticism, environmental humanities, media studies, culture studies, and visual rhetoric.

Bachelor Thesis from the year 2014 in the subject Film Science, grade: 1,0, University of Bayreuth, language: English, abstract: Climate change is arguably one of the most important issues of our time, but how do we perceive and how do we talk about it? Susanne C. Moser has identified the various difficulties that arise when trying to understand and communicate the phenomenon that is climate change. On the basis of her paper "Communicating Climate Change – History, Challenges, Process and Future Directions" I have analysed two American environmental documentaries – Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth" and Leonardo DiCaprio's "The 11th Hour" – on how they each deal with aforementioned difficulties and have tried to determine which one can be regarded as 'better' or 'more successful' in terms of getting the message across. The films shall be analyzed according to their structure, their scientific accuracy (if possible), their approach to the subject and the way in which they deal with the afore mentioned problems in a successful communication of climate change. Afterwards it shall be tried to assess whether it can be said that one of the two documentaries is more successful at 'getting the message across" and if such should be the case, reasons for this will be discussed.

Environmental ethics presents and defends a systematic and comprehensive account of the moral relation between human beings and their natural environment and assumes that human behaviour toward the natural world can and is governed by moral norms. In contemporary society, film has provided a powerful instrument for the moulding of such ethical attitudes. Through a close examination of the medium, Environmental Ethics and Film explores how historical ethical values can be re-imagined and re-constituted for more contemporary audiences. Building on an extensive back-catalogue of eco-film analysis, the author focuses on a diverse selection of contemporary films which target audiences’ ethical sensibilities in very different ways. Each chapter focuses on at least three close readings of films and documentaries, examining a wide range of environmental issues as they are illustrated across contemporary Hollywood films. This book is an invaluable resource for students and scholars of environmental communication, film studies, media and cultural studies, environmental philosophy and ethics.