From counter-culture to the Capitalocene: Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point at 50

Connolly, Stephen and Nardelli, Matilde (2020) From counter-culture to the Capitalocene: Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point at 50. In: Symposium: From Counter-culture to the Capitalocene: Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point at 50, 14 February 2020, University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, UK. (Unpublished)

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Creators:

Connolly, Stephen and Nardelli, Matilde

Corporate or Group Creators:

University for the Creative Arts

Description/Abstract:

Michelangelo Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point was a critical and commercial failure on its release in 1970. Antonioni was accused of not understanding America; the film was seen as a superficial aesthetic engagement with landscape and the emerging counter culture.

Fifty years on, the film’s attunement to capital’s impact on the Californian landscape – an early and trenchant visualisation of what may be called the Capitalocene – is coming into view. Furthermore, in Antonioni’s rendering of the US, any trace of dissent is violently policed; a highly prescient mainstream framing of militaristic management of dissent in the land of the free.

On its half century anniversary, this symposium revisits the film as a precursor of cultural and environmental critique in the cinema. Speakers will draw on contemporary reverberations of the filmmakers vision and his anticipation of material culture will make for a multi-faceted exciting symposium relevant to today's engaged students of film and media.

Symposium organised by Stephen Connolly (UCA) and Matilde Nardelli (University of West London) assisted by Emma Reyes (UCA).

Item Type:

Conference or Workshop Item

Date:

14 February 2020

Funders:

University for the Creative Arts

Event Location:

University for the Creative Arts, Farnham, UK

Schools:

School of Film, Media & Performing Arts

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