CARGC-CDCS Symposium Film Screening: Behemoth

"Behemoth" is a documentary film directed by Zhao Liang.

Behemoth will be screened during April 16-20 as a part of the month-long CARGC-CDCS Symposium, "Building Solidarity in the Anthropocene: Approaches to Infrastructure, Environment, and Global Communication." Each week of April, we will provide access to a different documentary film which explores relationships among technology, infrastructure, environment. The Symposium will conclude with a filmmaker discussion on Friday, April 29. Please see below for the detailed Symposium description.

Download the Symposium program

About the Film

Beginning with a mining explosion in Mongolia and ending in a ghost city west of Beijing, political documentarian Zhao Liang’s visionary film Behemoth (2015) details, in one breathtaking sequence after another, the social and ecological devastation behind an economic miracle that may yet prove illusory.

Register for the film screening on April 16-20

About the Filmmaker

Zhao Liang is an independent documentary filmmaker as well as a multimedia artist in photography and video art. His films have premiered at Cannes, Venezia, and Berlinale; artworks being exhibited at the International Center of Photography (New York), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), Haus der Kullturen der Welt (Berlin), Sala Grande Venezia (Venice), Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid) and numerous film festivals, art galleries and museums worldwide.

Have questions for the filmmaker?

Please submit your questions/comments about any of our featured films in advance. We will share them with filmmakers and respond during Q&A at the closing discussion with filmmakers on Friday, April 29.

This film screening is co-sponsored by the Center of Experimental Ethnography (CEE) and the Collective for Advancing Multimodal Research Arts (CAMRA) at the University of Pennsylvania.

About the Series

"Building Solidarity in the Anthropocene: Approaches to Infrastructure, Environment, and Global Communication"

Oceans rise. Trees burn. Shales fracture. Mines pollute. Viruses spread. Cities under lockdown. Infrastructures attack. Ecologies go feral…. We are in an era where infrastructures and environments are ever closely intersected on a global scale. How to make sense of the different but intersecting logics, networks, and poetics of infrastructures and environments? What critical roles do media and mediation play in shaping the anthropocene, both in the Global South and North? At the 2022 CARGC-CDCS Spring Symposium, we invite speakers to discuss how they address these important questions in their respective works.  
 
The 2022 Symposium will bring together leading scholars, artists, activists, journalists, and other experts to collaboratively envision our shared futures. Speakers will share their research and multi-modal works from wide-ranging and multidisciplinary perspectives. The main topics of discussion include resource extraction, decolonial practices, politics of environment, urban infrastructure, environmental racism, trans-oceanic supply chains, and communication infrastructures amidst global health emergencies. We envision each roundtable as a generative space for open dialogues and critical reflections. Our month-long Symposium will also feature filmmakers and their works which explore the relationships among technology, infrastructure, environment, and affected communities. Their films will be made available for online screening (access with codes) during the Symposium month. Our Symposium month will conclude with a cross-panel discussion about this year’s overarching themes and our featured films.