The research group Critical Inquiry hosts 'Green Screens: Xenoecologies', a series of screenings and discussions on ecology, environment and cinema, taking a closer look at imaginaries of ecologies from beyond Earth’s ecosystems. In this session, we will watch Prospect (2018), a low-budget (big impact) science fiction film directed by Zeek Earl & Chris Caldwell.

Organised by Callum Copley, this programme of three screenings will explore the encounter between humans and alien Others and attempt to understand how cinematic depictions of these events betray deeper Western anxieties of “reverse colonisation”, contamination and replacement, to name a few. How have we perceived aliens and what imagined threat they pose? What fears about humanity’s own actions and the current state of Earth do we project onto these external, speculative lifeforms? During the series, we will view the selected films and, after, for those who wish to stick around, discuss their explicit ecological themes and subtexts.

In this session, we will watch Prospect (2018), a low-budget (big impact) science fiction film directed by Zeek Earl & Chris Caldwell. This coming-of-age story follows a teenage girl on a toxic alien planet as she and her father hunt for precious materials, aiming to strike it rich. We will look at the ways in which the hostile ecology of the world in the film might inform how we view our own planet today, and explore how the logic of extraction and exploitation are transplanted on to a new environment, far beyond Earth.