Today, Ireland only has remnants of its ancient forests and has one of the lowest levels of tree cover in Europe. While afforestation is promoted with plantations of conifers and native trees (tree cover across Ireland is around 12%) there is value in considering how ancient forests were once regarded. Ireland was deforested over many…Read more Why ancient tree knowledge in Ireland matters today: Blackstairs Ecotrails film and Ogham tree-teaching stone
Film
First International Forest Day: social media and films show how 7 billion of us tied to health of our forests
Today is the first international day to globally celebrate our worlds forests. While we are all aware of the need to attend to our forests urgently, today is about the stories we create about our forests, the values we hold dear. The UN has since the International Year of the Forest in 2011 been reaching out to people across the world to ask them to show and tell us all about the forests that support their local environments.
American nature film: representations of dominion and imperialism
Cathy Fitzgerald reviews ecocinema book Film and the American Moral Vision of Nature: : Theodore Roosevelt to Walt Disney (2011) by Ronald B. Tobias. This book discusses nature dioramas of the early 20th century and 'how such animal exhibits conveyed a suspended visual statement of the newly understood superior natural order of nature, a new moral vision that became a powerful analogy to the rising and powerful modern America'. And later the repercussions: 'Throughout American nature cinema, from early films of the American West, to Africa and the South Pacific, to Disney’s animations and TrueLife nature documentaries...reveals that much of American nature film is 'couched nature within a uniquely American moral code' and imperialistic perspectives'
The Hollywood Forest Story : An EcoSocial Art Practice | Co. Carlow Ireland 