In God's land
cinematic affect, animation, and the perceptual dilemmas of slow violence
pp. 11-31
in: Rayson Alex (ed), Ecodocumentaries, Berlin, Springer, 2016Abstract
This chapter examines Pankaj Rishi Kumar's documentary feature In God"s Land (2012). In extending literary critic Rob Nixon's (2010) notion of 'slow violence" to cinema, it considers how a postcolonial Indian filmmaker uses animation to mediate socio-environmental injustices that are not spectacular but instead accumulate over long periods of time. In illuminating In God"s Land's dark and discordant mode of animation, I also suggest that such postcolonial cinema expands eco-film scholarship's current preoccupations with primarily Western/Japanese animation and with its predominant focus on animation as playful. In all, the essay argues for furthering our understanding of Indian and eco-animation.