CINEMA OF EXPLORATION Drawing together 18 contributions from leading international scholars, this book conceptualizes the history and theory of cinema’s century-long relationship to modes of exploration in its many forms, from colonialist expeditions to decolo- nial radical cinemas to the perceptual voyage of the senses made possible by the cinematic apparatus. This is the first anthology dedicated to analysing cinema’s relationship to exploration from a global, decolonial, and ecological perspective. Featuring lead- ing scholars working with pathbreaking interdisciplinary methodologies (drawing on insights from science and technology studies, postcolonial theory, indigenous ways of knowing, and film theory and history), it theorizes not only cinema’s implication in imperial conquest but also its cutting-edge role in empirical expan- sion and experiments in sensual and critical perception. The collected essays con- sider filmmaking in cross-cultural contexts and films made in or about peoples in South America, Asia, Africa, Indigenous North America, as well as polar, outer space, and underwater exploration, with famous figures such as Jacques-Yves Cousteau alongside amateur and scientific filmmakers. The essays in this collection are ideal for a broad range of scholars, graduate stu- dents, and advanced undergraduate students in cinema and media studies, cultural studies, and cognate fields. James Leo Cahill is Director of the Cinema Studies Institute and Associate Professor of Cinema Studies and French at the University of Toronto. He is author of Zoological Surrealism: The Nonhuman Cinema of Jean Painlevé (2019) and general editor of Discourse: Journal for Theoretical Studies in Media and Culture. Luca Caminati is Professor of Film Studies at Concordia University in Montreal. He is the author of Orientalismo eretico. Pier Paolo Pasolini e il cinema del Terzo Mondo (2007), Il cinema come happening: Pasolini’s Primitivism and the Sixties Italian Art Scene (2010), and Roberto Rossellini documentarista. Una cultura della realtà (2012), along with many articles and book chapters on Italian cinema and media. He is currently serving as associate editor for the journal Italica. Previously published in the AFI Film Readers series Edited by Edward Branigan and Charles Wolfe Ecocinema Theory and Practice Stephen Rust, Salma Monani, and Sean Cubitt Media Authorship Cynthia Chris and David A. Gerstner Pervasive Animation Suzanne Buchan The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture Tom Brown and Belén Vidal Cognitive Media Theory Ted Nannicelli and Paul Taberham Hollywood Puzzle Films Warren Buckland Endangering Science Fiction Film Sean Redmond and Leon Marvell New Silent Cinema Paul Flaig and Katherine Groo Teaching Transnational Cinema Katarzyna Marciniak and Bruce Bennett Fantasy/Animation Edited by Christopher Holliday and Alexander Sergeant Rediscovering U.S. Newsfilm Edited by Mark Garrett Cooper, Sara Beth Levavy, Ross Melnick, and Mark Williams The City Symphony Phenomenon Cinema, Art, and Urban Modernity Between the Wars, 1st Edition Edited by Steven Jacobs, Eva Hielscher, Anthony Kinik Screening Characters Characterization in Film, Television, and Interactive Media, 1st Edition Edited by Johannes Riis, Aaron Taylor Cinema of Exploration Essays on an Adventurous Film Practice Edited by James Leo Cahill and Luca Caminati For a full list of titles in this series, please visit https://www.routledge.com/ AFI-Film-Readers/book-series/AFIFILMREADERS CINEMA OF EXPLORATION Essays on an Adventurous Film Practice EDITED BY JAMES LEO CAHILL AND LUCA CAMINATI First published 2021 by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 and by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2021 American Film Institute The right of James Leo Cahill and Luca Caminati to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Cahill, James Leo, editor. | Caminati, Luca, editor. Title: Cinema of exploration : essays in adventurous film practice / edited by James Leo Cahill and Luca Caminati. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York : Routledge, 2021. | Series: AFI film readers series | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2020033784 (print) | LCCN 2020033785 (ebook) | ISBN 9781138602984 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429469299 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Explorers in motion pictures. | Motion pictures--Philosophy. Classification: LCC PN1995.9.E963 C56 2021 (print) | LCC PN1995.9.E963 (ebook) | DDC 791.43/653--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020033784 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020033785 ISBN: 978-1-138-60298-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-46929-9 (ebk) Typeset in Spectrum by SPi Global, India contents list of figures vii acknowledgements ix 1. cinema of exploration: an adventurous film practice and theory 1 james leo cahill and luca caminati part one explorations in perception 2. chasing bugs: microbial frontiers in american epidemiological documentaries, 1946–60 23 bishnupriya ghosh 3. through the body with laser gun and camera: fantastic voyage and the cinema of exploration 40 oliver gaycken 4. outer and inner space: psychedelia and selected representations of altered consciousness in experimental cinema 57 juan carlos kase 5. weird loops: climate change, drone cinema, and the work of mourning 73 katherine groo part two cinema of expedition 6. chance wrote the screenplay, reality directed the film: the exploration films of hans hass 91 vinzenz hediger 7. environmental aesthetics: tracing a latent image from early safari films to contemporary art cinema 107 inga pollmann 8. traveling the world with a smile: james fitzpatrick’s traveltalks 125 liz czach 9. aquariums, diving equipment, and the undersea films of john ernest williamson 143 jon crylen 10. sounding travel documentary in wartime china: the dual s nt journey of long live the nation 158 e nt ling zhang o c part three narratives of exploration 11. exploring marker’s cuba: shivers and rhythms 183 nora m. alter 12. like a mobile, living archive: antonioni the traveler 194 marco dalla gassa 13. adventure cinema in the age of austerity: the case of miguel gomes’s arabian nights (2015) trilogy 211 malini guha 14. amazon cinema: vegetal storytelling 228 catherine russell part four cinema of exploitation 15. mondo exotica: ethnography, eros, and exploitation in italian cinema of the 1960s and 1970s 247 clarissa clò 16. from pierre perrault to rolf de heer: auteur cinema and the poetic exploration of indigenous lands and identities 266 karine bertrand 17. prospecting: cinema and the exploration of extraction 280 brian r. jacobson vi coda 18. speculations on film/theory and the trope of exploration 297 bhaskar sarkar contributors 318 about the american film institute 323 index 325 list of figures 2.1 (a) The boy patient and (b) astronaut aspirations from The Age of Promise (1956) 24 2.2 (a) A sample preparation, (b) the iconic microscope, and (c) visions of microbial life in Tropical Investigations in Africa (1957) 29 2.3 (a) Visualizing microbes and (b) storming the beach in U.S. Army Laboratories (1947) 33 2.4 (a) A clinical subject, (b) a shot of a parasitic flatworm, and (c) visions of epidemic cartography in The Human Blood Parasite Schistosomiasis Japanicum (1947) 35 3.1 The “Gemini 5” camera platform, used for extended camera movements in the brain set 46 3.2 “Integral ambiguity” in Perri: animated snow (by Disney effects animator Joshua Meador) immediately below and behind the rabbit, together with actual particles photographed at the point of takeoff 50 3.3 “Integral ambiguity” in Fantastic Voyage: effects animation creates electrical impulses in the brain 50 4.1 The threat of Warhol: psychedelic encounters in the profilmic. Eric Emerson in The Chelsea Girls (1966). Courtesy of the Andy Warhol Museum 62 4.2 Taking the plunge: Ben Van Meter’s SF Trips Festival: An Opening (1967). Courtesy of the Academy Film Archive and the estate of Ben Van Meter 66 5.1 The drone lifts its gaze to the horizon and the river of melted ice stretches out as far as the eye can see. Drone video by Josh Haner for the New York Times, “Greenland is Melting Away,” 27 October 2015 80 5.2 An oblique view of Lake Poopó, an Uru-Murato fisherman, and his stranded vessel. Drone video by Josh Haner for the New York Times, “Climate Change Claims a Lake, and an Identity,” 7 July 2016 81 7.1 (a–c) Shooting the gnu and presenting the trophy in Marabout Hunt in Abyssinia (Alfred Machin, Pathé 1911) 108 7.2 Keith Carter, “Goodbye to a Horse” 1993, gelatin silver print, 39 × 39.2 cm. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Gift of Daniel Greenberg and Susan Steinhauser 113 7.3 (a–i) The killing of the panther in Machin’s Panther Hunt (Pathé, 1909) 115 7.4 (a–d) The group of gold seekers needs help in Thomas Arslan’s Gold (2013) 120 es 7.5 The riders disappear in the image in Arslan’s Gold 121 r u g 8.1 Billy Rose Theatre Division, The New York Public fi of Library. “Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer presents James A. t s Fitzpatrick’s Traveltalks, The Voice of the Globe” li The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1920–1929. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/73b3c7df-fb31- c1c9-e040-e00a1806795a 129 9.1 The Williamson photosphere. Image in Williamson, Twenty Years under the Sea, 40 145 9.2 View from inside the photosphere. Image in Williamson, Twenty Years under the Sea, 310 147 13.1 An example of a sequence featuring a glamorous Scheherazade, shot in 35 mm 218 13.2 Alta de Lisboa/Lisbon Heights 222 14.1 “Pfeffergericht” translates as “prepared with Pepper.” Frame grab from Origin of the Night (Amazon Cosmos) (Lothar Baumgarten, 1978) 232 14.2 Antonio Bolivar as Old Karamakete and Brionne Davis as Evan in Embrace of the Serpent (Ciro Guerra, 2015) 235 14.3 Nilbio Torres as Young Karamakete and Jan Bijvoet as Theo in Embrace of the Serpent (Ciro Guerra, 2015) 236 15.1 Lesbian nightlife in Paris from Women of the World (dir. Gualtiero Jacopetti, Paolo Cavara, and Franco Prosperi, 1963)—screengrabs from Blue Underground DVD (2003) 254 15.2 Lesbian nightlife in Paris from Women of the World (dir. Gualtiero Jacopetti, Paolo Cavara, and Franco Prosperi, 1963)—screengrabs from Blue Underground DVD (2003) 254 15.3 Emanuelle at work with the camera from viii Emanuelle in America (dir. Joe D’Amato, 1976)—screengrab from Blue Underground DVD (2012) 258 17.1 (a–b) Drilling the floor of the Persian Gulf in the opening shots of Station 307 (Malle, 1955) 286 17.2 (a–b) Nature rendered as extractable abstraction in the title credits of James Hill’s The New Explorers (1955) 289 17.3 British Petroleum advertisement, The Times (13 September 1965) 292 18.1 Cover of the January, 1923 issue of The American Cinematographer 298 acknowledgements We thank the authors for their exciting contributions. Their inspiring ideas, challenging conversations, patience, and diligence during this pro- cess made it a pleasure. Profound thanks go to Charles Wolfe, series editor of the American Film Institute Series, and to the team at Routledge, including Felisa Salvago-Keyes for acquiring this manuscript, Sukriti Pandey for carefully shep herding it from manuscript to book, and Jennifer Vennall, Karthik Thiruvengadam, Wendy Jo Dymond, and Jay Marchand for helping bring it to final form. We thank the three anonymous reviewers whose support and candid critique helped make this a better manuscript. Kaia Scott copy- edited and formatted the manuscript before final submission, vastly accel- erating completion and improving its quality. The research and writing for this book were supported in part by Social Science and Humanities Research Council Insight Grants held by each of the editors. This project began at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema of Concordia University, where, thanks to an invitation from Martin Lefebvre and Joshua Neves, the editors initiated the conversation that resulted in this book. Subsequent meetings in the collegial atmosphere of Montreal provided the skeleton for the project and a sequence of lively panels at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies conference in Toronto in 2018 its flesh. We thank the graduate students in the “Cinema and Exploration” seminars held in autumn 2019 at Concordia University and the University of Toronto for accompanying us in thought as we completed this manu- script, and who served as a primary audience for its ideas. At Concordia: Fadi AbuNemeh, Nicholas Avedisian-Cohen, Elena Altheman, Zoë Laks, Anton O. Clark, Kaitlyn Zozula; at Toronto: Srijita Banerjee, Michael Centomo, Vittoria Lion, Meghan McDonald, Denise Mok, Brianna Mullen, Sam Reimer, Ganga Rudraiah, Yung-Lin Wang, and Joshua Wiebe. Funding from the Cinema Studies Institute at the University of Toronto and the Faculty of Fine Arts at Concordia University allowed for seminar exchanges that further fomented these ideas and—we hope—have sparked the next generation of adventurous scholars interested in cinema and exploration. Our colleagues at the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema and the Cinema Studies Institute, as well as our extended community of colleagues in