We all love watching movies, little realising that we are complicit in the destruction film-making unleashes. The images we enjoy do not come from nothing; there are significant material consequences to it. James Cameron’s Titanic had decimated a Mexican sea urchin population and Danny Boyle’s The Beach had wrecked natural dunes in a Thai island. Not all are as destructive, but film-making is not without its ecological carcasses floating in the air, circulating in the water, sinking into the soil, and rustling in the leaves. And it isn’t a recent phenomenon—the dirtiest secrets of film were rarely allowed to surface as we had tacitly sacrificed the real for the spectacle.
Daily consumption of 200 million litres of water by (then) Eastman Kodak to produce 80 per cent of the world’s film supply had the audiences’ unwritten sanction. The eco-destruction doesn’t end at that; the methodological complexities of film watching and its disposal is beset with hidden...
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