Barbican Land Cinema series presented by Dr Becca Voelcker

Dr Becca Voelcker, Lecturer in Fine Art Critical Studies, is curating a series that the Barbican describes as a “season of rare films that sowed the seeds for climate justice today.”

Across four events throughout November, Dr Voelcker will showcase a range of films, from documentaries to experimental shorts, including examples from Orkney, the USA, Colombia, Brazil and Japan.  

Ogawa Productions and Peng Xiaolian, 2001

Dr Voelcker coined the term Land Cinema to describe the varied genre of films which explore how land is used and who has access to it. Particularly relevant for our current moment of climate crisis, Land Cinema looks backs to films from the last fifty years which are critical and expose injustices, but which are also creative in showing alternative ways of using land.  

Dr Voelcker said, “I was motivated to curate the series to bring these significant films to a wider audience because many are hard to access. Exploring land as a site of responsibility, from political, ecological and aesthetic perspectives, these films are amazing at articulating inspiring ideas about different possible futures, which can spark important conversations.” 

Margaret Tait, 1998

For Dr Voelcker, it is important not to fall into "dead-end thinking” – and these films open possibilities and encourage other ways of contemplating land and our relationship with it.  

The screenings will all be introduced by Dr Voelcker. The first event will include an on-stage conversation with writer Lucy Jones and the final event will feature films by and a conversation with contemporary Brazilian director Ana Vaz.

The films featured in the series are just some of those which Dr Voelcker examines in her new book ‘Land Cinema in the Age of Extraction’ (University of California Press). The book delves into archives to explore work by farmer-filmmakers in Japan and Mali to a gardener-filmmaker in the USA, and films from Wales, LA, Orkney, the Navajo Nation and Colombia.