“Mining Movies in the Age of Cinematic (Post-)Humanism”

This talk presented by the Department of German Studies revisits the history and aesthetics of cinematic humanism from its beginnings in the late 1920s and its heydays during the late 1940s to the neo-humanist revival in the 1980s by examining cinematic explorations of mining in two recent documentaries: Workingman's Death (2005) by the Austrian filmmaker Michael Glawogger and Behemoth (2015) by the Chinese filmmaker Zhao Liang.

While Behemoth takes us to the heart of global mining networks in Inner Mongolia, Workingman's Death traces the loose ends of global industrial labor in the Ukraine, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan, and China. Both films respond to the humanist challenge of creating a 'world picture' while addressing the challenges of locating a geopolitical point of view for such globalized visions.