Trees in European and American Cinemas
The first English language book-length study of trees in cinema
- Explores how trees have been framed in popular genres and diverse screen modes
- Presents case studies from the US, France, the UK, Georgia, Poland, Germany, the Soviet Union, Chile and Cuba
- Asks how trees on screen intersect with notions of wilderness and civilisation, property and ownership, consumerism and environmentalism, beauty and threat
- Attends to the materiality of filmed trees and considers the politics of anthropocentric and arboreal perspectives
This book considers significant ways in which trees have been represented in European and American cinemas, via the symbolic regimes of various popular genres (period films, war films, disaster movies) and screen modes (documentary, art cinema, animation). It does so by presenting series of case studies from different cultural contexts and historical moments, from Le Déjeuner de Bébé (Baby’s Meal) (1895) to Disco Boy (2023).
1. Introduction: Approaching Trees on Screen
2. Trees, Property and Power
3. Frontier Forests, Violent Encounters
4. Jungles of the Mind
5. The Lorax: Consumerism, Environmentalism, Syncretism
6. Ecology of Fear: Spectacle and Morality in Wildfire Films
7. Conclusion: The Temporality of Trees
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