Ecological thought and Film: Pulsos Subterráneos (Elena Pardo)

Display Schedule

Code Completion Credits Range Language Instruction Semester
300METF credit 1 30 seminar hours (45 min) of instruction per semester, 3 to 8 hours of self-study English winter

Subject guarantor

Alexandra MORALESOVÁ

Name of lecturer(s)

Alexandra MORALESOVÁ

Department

The subject provides Subjects and study plans provided by faculty

Contents

The course presents a documentary & cinema expanded performance „Pulsos Subterráneos“ in a presence of the artist Elena Pardo and focuses on the capacity of contemporary materialist film to mediate ecological thinking. In a 16mm film and sound performative multilogue, Elena Pardo attempts to subjectively register and open up the collective experience of life, culture, resistance, and defense in the communities of Zacatecas (Vetagrande) and Oaxaca (Calpulálpam) in Mexico, which face extensive historical and contemporary mining activities. Pardo has been working in this area since 2012 and returns there to develop her artistic, educational, and research activities.

Date and time: 7. 10. 2025 at 20:00

Venue: Divadlo Alfred ve dvoře, Františka Křížka 495/36, 170 00 Praha 7

Link to the event: https://alfredvedvore.cz/cs/program/pulsos-subterraneos-356/

Learning outcomes

The students should be able to reflect on the topics such as environmental crisis, raw resource origins, mediality and materiality of technology and make connection with European history, postcolonial politics and narratives.

Prerequisites and other requirements

Own interest in the topic.

Literature

Elena Pardo is a Mexican experimental and documentary filmmaker. She explores the possibilities of photochemical film in the process of shooting, in the laboratory, and in the projection situation. Since 2005, she has been a member of the Trinchera Ensamble group, which is dedicated to expanded cinema. In 2013, she co-founded and currently runs the experimental film laboratory LEC (Laboratorio Experimental de Cine) in Mexico City and participates in various community creative and educational projects (Oaxaca). She screens her films and performances at international festivals.

Artist’s website on the project: https://pulsossubterraneos.com/

BOZAK, Nadia (2011). The cinematic footprint : lights, camera, natural resources. Rutgers university press, New Brunswick, New Jersey, and London.

JAIKUMAR, Priya and GRIEVESON, Lee (2024). “Introduction to Media and Extraction: On

the Extractive Film.” Media+Environment 6. https://doi.org/10.1525/001c.123925.

MAXWELL, Richard, MILLER, Toby (2012). Greening the Media (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

PATEL, Raj, MOORE, Jason W. (2018). A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things. A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet. University of California Press. (Also available in Czech).

WYNTER, Sylvia, EUDELL, Demetrius L. (2022). We Must Learn To Sit Down Together And Talk About A Little Culture: Decolonising Essays, 1967-1984. Peepal Tree, Leeds, England.

YOUNGBLOOD, Gene (1970) The Artist as Ecologist. First published in Expanded Cinema, P. Dutton & Co., Inc., New York 1970, pp. 346-351.

Evaluation methods and criteria

Attendance at the film screening and independent research are mandatory, and active participation in the discussion after the film is welcome.

Note

Contact person for enrollment in the module: Andrea Petrovicova, e-mail: andrea.petrovicova@famu.cz

Further information

This course is an elective for all students of this school

Schedule for winter semester 2025/2026:

Date Day Time Tutor Location Notes No. of paralel
07.10.2025 20:00–22:00 Alexandra MORALESOVÁ
Venue: Divadlo Alfred ve dvoře, Františka Křížka 495/36, 170 00 Praha 7 lecture parallel1

Schedule for summer semester 2025/2026:

The schedule has not yet been prepared

The subject is a part of the following study plans