Cinematic cultures of descent

The other sides of the mountaineering story

Datos Bibliográficos

ID21783376
AutoresEva-Maria Müller (0000-0003-3978-735X, Universität Innsbruck, autor de correspondencia)
Año2023
Volumen21
Número1
Páginas96-115
Fecha de publicación2023-01-02
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaNew Review of Film and Television Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1740-0309 • E-ISSN: 1740-7923
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/17400309.2022.2102405
OpenAlexW4321483734
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas2
Referencias citadas21

This essay introduces the descent as a critical vantage point that broadens the mountain film genre and reconsiders modernist debates with an eye towards cinema’s socio-ecological substance. I analyze three films—Philipp Stölzl’s Nordwand (2008), Nils Gaup’s Ofelaš (1987), and Jeff Orlowski’s Chasing Ice (2012)—for how they highlight social connectivity and environmental sustainability in their accounts of national tragedy, Indigenous legend, and eco-catastrophe. Central to this inquiry are the multiperspectival and self-reflective qualities of cinema and the ways in which its immersive qualities dovetail into cinematic world-building and global decolonization. By bringing media ecology together with postcolonial scholarship on alpinist control and film historical reflections on descent, I argue that cinematic cultures of descent reveal the hidden stakes of alpinism and challenge established ideas of the perception of self and Other in modern mountaineering. This, in turn, prompts fresh registers of thinking mountains and mountaineering in ways that invite cultural renegotiations of gender roles, power, and individualism among mountaineers. Ultimately, it highlights the special role film plays in facilitating a change of perspective, thus affecting behavior in the human and non-human world

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Indigenous · Media studies · Mountaineering · Movie theater · Political science · Scholarship · Sociology · Visual arts · Adventure Sports and Sensation Seeking · Anthropology · Geographies of human-animal interactions · History · Polar Research and Ecology · Ecology