Geological Filmmaking: Seeing Geology Through Film and Film Through Geology

Abstract

In this article, I consider the aesthetic dimension of cinema in conversation with the material dimension of the geology that subtends it, to propose the concept and practice of “geological filmmaking” as a strategy for addressing the perceptual challenges posed by the ecological crisis and the Anthropocene. Geological filmmaking emerges from the understanding that the form and content of any film—and thus the perceptual and durational experience it engenders—are rooted in geological materiality. Geology concerns itself with matter as much as process, dealing with mountains and molecules as much as with sedimentation and erosion, and thus, with time itself. In this way, we can already think of geology as a film in slow motion, and of land formations as films of their own making: what they are in the present includes the trace of their formation. Expanding this metaphor, we can triangulate geology as constituted by land formations in the current moment, the mineralogical materials they comprise, and the ongoing processes that formed and continue to form them. A film, likewise, can be triangulated through the images and sounds it consists of, its material form (analogue or digital), and the temporal experience it generates in viewing. Both geology and film are thus contained in the contingency of form, materiality, and temporality. This structure shapes the article’s progression, which includes analysis of two of my practice-research film projects: one on sinkholes, and one on asbestos.