CineClub presents a special season of films in conjunction with our summer exhibition Touch Nature exploring man's relationship with nature. While our first screening focused on polution and the effects of our modern existance on the natural world, our final two screenings examine the colonial desire to dominate nature. These final two screenings Tarzan the Ape Man and Safari, directed by Ulrich Seidl, are conceived of as a double bill and are best viewed together.
Book free tickets & find out more by clicking on the film title.
Elements Of(f) Nature
Tuesday 12 May, 7pm
Elements Of(f) Balance is a journey to ecosystems hardly ever seen before, existing amidst the ruins of a world based on exploitation. The focus is not on dystopian visions of the future, but on a new awareness and the new, concrete opportunities that open up for humanity when interrelated ways of living and forgotten alliances form the basis of our dealings with nature.
Tarzan The Ape Man
Wednesday 27 May, 7pm
This screening is conceived as a double bill with Safari by Ulrich Seidl.
Tarzan The Ape Man from 1932 was one of six MGM films (and later six more films for RKO) starring the Brad Pitt of his day, the Austrian Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller as Tarzan. The combination of spectacular sets recreating the jungle in Hollywood and documentary footage highlight the contrast of staged vs real nature. The film, losely based on the books by Edgar Rice Burroughs, is a perfect example of the human desire to control and dominate nature. Made in 1932 there is also a deeply colonial narrative with white adventurers heading out into a world to be conquered and exploited. It also reflects colonialist attitudes and portrays western characters as superior while depicting locals as expendable.
Safari
Thursday 11, 7pm
In the wild expanses, where bushbucks, impalas, zebras, gnus and other creatures graze by the thousands, they are on holiday. German and Austrian hunting tourists drive through the bush, lie in wait, stalk their prey. They shoot, sob with excitement and pose before the animals they have bagged. A vacation movie about killing, a movie about human nature. By presenting hunting as leisure, infamous Austrian director Ulrich Seidl confronts viewers with the banality of violence and raises unsettling questions about human attitudes toward nature, death, and domination.
