Cine-Ecologies and the Temporality of a Radical Cinematic Production

Abstract

Debashree Mukherjee’s writing on cine-ecology (2020) defines a materialist concept of cinema production that recognizes a relational mesh between ideologies, places, practices, infrastructures, climates, and human and non-human actors. This article provides a situated account of my recent cinematic practice to illustrate how such a relational view of film production can be useful in sustaining radical temporalities outside capitalist Western modernity’s valuations of speed and movement (Povinelli 2016, 2021; Doane 2002). To do this, I adapt Mukherjee’s concept of cine-ecology to focus on time, care and pleasure, using my works The Fold (2022) and Residue (2023) as case studies. Reconfiguring cine-ecologies through a temporal lens emphasizes even more relations, widening the net of what actors and processes can be linked in exchange.