Becca Voelcker, "Land Cinema in an Age of Extraction" (U California Press, 2025)

In this episode of New Books in Environmental Studies, host Moteza Haji Zadeh speaks with Dr. Becca Walker about her groundbreaking 2025 book, *Land Cinema in an Age of Extraction*, published by the University of California Press. Walker, a lecturer at Goldsmiths, University of London and BBC New Generation Thinker, introduces 'land cinema' as a powerful interdisciplinary framework that redefines cinema not as passive representation but as a dynamic, socially engaged practice rooted in ecological, political, and aesthetic resistance. Drawing from films made across Wales, Mali, Japan, Colombia, and the Navajo Nation from the 1960s to the present, she traces how filmmakers—often insider-outsiders—use experimental documentaries, photo essays, and community-based screenings to expose extractive violence while documenting acts of repair, self-representation, and intergenerational solidarity. The book challenges dominant cinematic canons by centering marginalized voices and reimagining cinema as a living infrastructure of collective action, healing, and ecological responsibility. Walker’s work is deeply personal and politically charged, informed by her Welsh heritage and lived engagement with climate justice, and she advocates for a 'reparative reading' that values affinity over authority, and process over product.