Professor Chip Oscarson’s International Cinema lecture tackles the connection between humans and the environment.
Nature tends to be thought of as everything on the earth that hasn’t been meddled with by humans. But aren’t humans a part of nature? Associate Professor Chip Oscarson (Interdisciplinary Humanities and Scandinavian Studies) shared his International Cinema lecture on this topic titled Women at War: Ecoterrorism and Its Discontents: Finding Humanity in a More Than Human World on January 25, 2023. The film takes place in Iceland and revolves around issues of maintaining nature in its untouched state and providing an environment for humans to thrive. The ecological impact of a local hydropower plant brings this issue to a head.
The installation of the Kárahnjúkar Hydropower Plant created one of the biggest ecological issues Icelandic citizens have dealt with. Although the plant generated clean energy, it hurt the natural beauty and wildlife of Iceland while only providing power to an aluminum processing plant that created exports. So, citizens wondered, who did the hydropower plant really benefit? Were those benefits worth harming the landscape?
Ecological questions never have an easy, straightforward answer. Oscarson explained that the nuances involved destroy the possibility of good or bad points of view. The film illustrates this truth as it follows a woman attempting to sabotage both the Kárahnjúkar Hydropower Plant and the aluminum plant. During her crusade, she must confront the many layers to ecological questions and grapple with the fact that humans and the environment must coexist. Oscarson said, “[Nature] is not something that is separate from us that has to be saved and preserved only in a certain kind of way to count as nature.” Instead, humans are a vital part of nature. The film Woman at War takes these questions and ideas and complicates them so the audience must come to their own conclusions.
Woman at War constantly addresses questions about how humans connect with the environment, but it leaves its audience with an ambiguous ending. Oscarson said that this was so the audience could ponder the issues presented. Only the audience can present solutions and impact what happens next in the environment we are all a part of.
International Cinema has a rotating selection of impactful films. Check out its website to stay up to date on what’s playing. Weekly film lectures are held in 250 KMBL on Wednesdays at 5:00 p.m.