Silent Running

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Eye Filmmuseum seen across the river IJ © Marcus Koppen

Eye Filmmuseum, © Marcus Koppen

campaign image Cinema Ecologica

still from Spaceship Earth (Matt Wolf, US 2020)

still Spaceship Earth (Matt Wolf, US 2020)

poster Silent Running (Douglas Trumbull, US 1971)

still from Silent Running (Douglas Trumbull, US 1971)

still Silent Running (Douglas Trumbull, US 1971)

Cinema Ecologica: header Spaceship Earth + Silent Running

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Is there hope for humanity? Perhaps, if botanist Freeman Lowell can succeed in keeping the last trees and crops that could be saved alive in greenhouses in space. Douglas Trumbull’s eco science fiction from 1972 became a cult hit with a serious, urgent message.

Botanist Freeman Lowell is flying to the Rings of Saturn in a stolen spaceship, with the last trees and gardens from planet Earth on board. Will he succeed in saving botanical life from Earth?

Film directors have used fiction to show how humanity relates to nature, in every genre. Think, for instance, of disaster films, ones about pandemics, underwater creatures that can talk or plant-based life forms who colonise the minds and bodies of earth’s inhabitants.

Cinema Ecologica

Was it a foolish hippy experiment, applied biology or art? Eight young adventurers were locked into a hermetically sealed replica of planet earth’s ecosystem, Biosphere 2. The only outside influence, the sun streaming into the dome.

In 1991, eight young ‘biospherians’, followers of charismatic activist John Allen, the pan’s spiritual father, allowed themselves to be locked into a gigantic glass dome. Under it lay various ecosystems, including a tropical rainforest, a tropical ocean with reef, a desert and a savannah featuring hundreds of carefully curated organisms.
For two years, the eight Americans were to conduct scientific experiments and trials aiming to establish which influence humanity has on its environment. Soon however, the group was simply trying to survive: CO2 emissions were rising, the harvests were poor and the experiment didn’t meet scientific standards. After two years the now emaciated, exhausted participants emerged from the biosphere.
Matt Wolf’s documentary is the sober opposite of SF film Silent Running (1971, Douglas Trumbull), in which a botanist in a spaceship puts it all on the line to save the last surviving plants from planet earth. John Allen’s dream was to make other planets inhabitable for humans using biosphere-like domes.

Spaceship Earth

Eco-science fiction films are about the relationship between humans and nature. How has that narrative evolved over the past 50 years? And is it a single narrative or are there many? We will immerse ourselves in the cinematic history of humanity’s future on earth and whether there is still room for hope or are we doomed to imagine the end of the world?

Sociologist Ruben Jacobs discusses his new book De eeuw van Felix in which he ponders what it will be like for his son Felix to grow up in an era defined by attempting to keep the planet inhabitable, both for him and the generations that follow. He wonders how do you maintain hope, perhaps even against all odds? He will focus, among other things, on the desolate, abandoned former industrial city of Detroit where the population has collectively embraced urban farming. Ruben Jacobs will interview media scientist Dan Hassler-Forest about eco-science fiction films such as Jurassic Park, Avatar and Annihilation in which gardening humans have lost control. He will also speak in depth to artist Müge Yilmaz whose work has been selected for the Venice Biennale 2022. She will reveal how her work was inspired by that of land-art maker Agnes Denes.

Van wie is de toekomst?

The documentary Spaceship Earth is a sober counterpart to the SF film Silent Running in which a botanist aboard a spaceship risks it all to keep planet earth’s last plants alive. Spaceship Earth follows eight, young ‘biospherians’ who are locked into a gigantic glass dome with various ecosystems for two years  with dramatic results. Double bill.

Patricia Pisters, professor of Film Studies at the University of Amsterdam, introduces two visionary films on attempts to live in cooperation and co-creation with nature.

Spaceship Earth + Silent Running

show for: 707952 2022-06-12 19:00:00

show for: 707952 2022-06-13 13:00:00

With sociologist Ruben Jacobs, media scientist Dan Hassler-Forest and artist Müge Yilmaz.

Silent Running

Douglas Trumbull / US, 1971 / 89 min.

Is there hope for humanity? Perhaps, if botanist Freeman Lowell can succeed in keeping the last trees and crops that could be saved alive in greenhouses in space. Douglas Trumbull’s eco science fiction from 1972 became a cult hit with a serious, urgent message.

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Spaceship Earth

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Why in Eye

"Silent Running depicts a selfless, true science fiction love between a human, the gardens he is tending and the robots that help him." – Anna Abrahams, programmer