Political ecologies of food through film:‘agropoetic’ cinematic style in Ermanno Olmi’s Terra Madre

Abstract

ABSTRACT Drawing from overlapping interests in visual culture and food studies, this essay documents political ecologies of food through film focusing on eco-food documentary Terra Madre. The role of film as powerful tool to document and intervene in the ongoing ecological crisis of the food system has been widely recognized. The link between cinema, poetic expression, and ecology is particularly evident in Terra Madre, where the human-environment interactions are evoked through the use of what I call an ‘agropoetic’ cinematic style, an affective space for excavating cultures and traditions that value the soil where farmers share their own narratives of agroecological empowerment. Through a close textual reading of the documentary, the essay interrogates the relationships among food, nature, and society to expose the dynamics that reproduce practices of agroextractivism and injustice within the food system. This approach acknowledges the political embeddedness of environmental issues viewed as rooted in systems of power and political control over marginal and colonized groups. The film’s narrative is analyzed within larger visual, discursive, and ecological contexts in order to begin sketching new visual political ecologies of food in Italy.