Sanxia haoren

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The museum for film and the art of the moving image in the Netherlands. Visit the exhibition or cinema and discover our collection with more than 55.000 films.

Eye Filmmuseum

7 February Eye is closed

still from Der siebente Kontinent (Michael Haneke, AT 1989)

still Der siebente Kontinent (Michael Haneke, AT 1989)

Eye Filmmuseum seen across the river IJ © Marcus Koppen

Eye Filmmuseum, © Marcus Koppen

campaign image Cinema Ecologica

poster Still Life (Sanxia haoren) (Jia Zhang-ke, CN/HK 2006)

still from Still Life (Sanxia haoren) (Jia Zhang-ke, CN/HK 2006)

still Still Life (Sanxia haoren) (Jia Zhang-ke, CN/HK 2006)

still from Apocalypse: The Four Nightmares

still Apocalypse: The Four Nightmares

still from The White Lung City (Marco Pando, 2009)

still The White Lung City (Marco Pando, 2009)

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exclusiveScreeningsInEye

A human life is not worth much compared to economic growth in this documentary-like, completely surreal film. The construction of the Three Gorges Dam in China is a project of megalomaniac proportions. To feed the insatiable demand for energy, millions of people are forced to relocate as their villages will be underwater.

A boat full of tourists sails across a gigantic reservoir set in an overwhelming landscape, dominated by three gigantic gorges. On the banks of the reservoir, life is miserable. How lonely can you get: one man literally lives in a bridge in a village where painted lines show the impending level of the water. In this wrecked setting, a man and a woman are each searching for their lovers, to tell them once they have found them that their relationship is over.

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

Still Life

Haneke’s clinical portrait of an average Austrian family realising how worthless money and possessions are, and arriving at the ultimate conclusion. Nicht bremsen it says on the carwash. The perfect metaphor for life in a consumption-driven society.

The father’s name is Georg, the mother’s Anna and the child is called Eva. Pretty standard really. Father works hard for a security company, mother is an optician and the child goes to school.
In three chapters Haneke paints a claustrophobic portrait of a family trapped in a constrictive pattern. Ultimately seeking almost mystical salvation in the automatisms of a fully functional, consumption-oriented existence, in which human contact proves impossible.

Der siebente Kontinent

In this short film programme, moderator Evanne Nowak talks to filmmakers and the audience about emotions associated with climate change: fear, anger, sadness, shame, a 
sense of powerlessness.

Instead of talking only about facts, numbers and technical solutions, the moderator asks to allow confusion and feelings of loss. And not to run away from the feelings, because they are a sign of our commitment and a step toward solidarity with the climate and non-human others.

Climate Grief (shorts) + Evanne Nowak

Electro-acoustic duo Wanderwelle, Morgan Knibbe,  and acclaimed experimental filmmaker Bruce Conners imagine the end of time… In Cinema Ecologica: three nuclear nightmares, two of which take place in the past and one in the future.

The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, soldiers unknowingly exposed to nuclear radiation and the American atomic bomb test on Bikini Island: this Cinema Ecologica special looks at key moments in human history.

Still Life

Jia Zhang-ke / CN, HK, 2006 / 111 min.

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Der siebente Kontinent

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Cinema Ecologica