Filmmaking-in-Place

Abstract

In Meek’s Cutoff (2010) and Eden (2012), filmmakers Kelly Reichardt and Megan Griffiths (respectively) negotiate the interconnection between women, nature, and patriarchal capitalism through their emphasis on place, or one’s separation from it. Ecofeminist aesthetics resonate with regional production when directors emphasize relationships with environments and people over typical neoliberal concerns of production such as cost and infrastructure. A particular political aesthetics emerges when the approach emphasizes building community and the politics of place, rather than the bottom line. Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff shifts from the panoramic landscape shots of the classical Western to allow gendered engagement. This framing redirects the viewer away from the supposedly “male” action and instead focuses on the constant work of the women, which is the real action of survival. In Eden, Griffiths similarly frames human trafficking victim Hyun Jae in closed spaces where she is forced into sex work. Such cinematography is drastically juxtaposed with the open framing that signals potential emancipation. In each film, feminist politics intertwine with aesthetics of space to resist patriarchal capitalism co-opting women’s labor, an approach relevant to both environmentalism and feminism.