Climate Fiction Goes to Hollywood
Photo by iStock/Notorious91
FUTURE SCENARIO: A major news channel interrupts your local programming to tell you that a cataclysmic flood is rolling in; all major landmarks will be wiped out and hardly anyone will survive.
Scenarios like this are common in ''Cli-Fi,'' or Climate Fiction, a new literary and movie genre that’s rising faster than the planet’s oceans. It originated in books and has found a second home on movie screens.
Recognizing Cli-Fi’s popularity an American journalist and PR consultant named Danny Bloom decided in 2014 to create an awards show – dubbed ''The Cliffies'' – that honored the best climate-themed movies of the year.
Some of the award categories are standard, like best movie and best actor, but a few are unique to the Cliffies, like best marketing campaign and most in tune with current climate science.
Unlike typical Hollywood award shows, the Cliffies are broadcasted online only, sans red carpet and lavish gowns. Anyone from climate scientists to ordinary movie buffs can participate in the nomination process.
You’ll probably recognize the blockbusters that swept up The Cliffie awards in 2014: “Noah,” starring Russell Crowe and Emma Watson, took home “Best Screenplay” while “Snowpiercer,” starring Chris Evans, won “Best Movie.”
But in 2015, a foreign film snatched most of the Cliffie awards: ''Taklub,'' a Filipino film, features a community reconstructing their lives in the wake of Super Typhoon Haiyan.
Cli-Fi movies like "Taklub," which reflect actual climate-induced disasters, are becoming more prevalent for a reason: people need them.
A BBC article says the “lure of the disaster movie” is based on a post-9/11 world filled with anxiety. The trauma of terrorist attacks, an increase in natural disasters, and urban riots are realistic situations moviegoers want to see on the screen to reassure themselves that they’ll survive even the worst experiences.
Through simulation, audiences can grapple with a world in which nothing is certain.
One thing we can count on is that natural disasters will keep occurring, both in fiction and in reality.
At their best, Cli-Fi films prompt us to pay closer attention to real climate change issues.
Climate change isn’t going to be fixed by watching movies, but it’s a great way to start the conversation.
Wired film critic and culture reporter Scott Thill who co-coined the cli-fi term on his own, separately and independently in two Wired film reviews in 2009 and 2010, without ever know Bloom at the time, is currently writing a non-fiction book about Cli-Fi and it is due out in paperback this December. His essay on the rise of cli-fi appeared in the Huffington Post in November 2014.
A rightwing climate skeptic and American humorist using the pen name of "Paco" also co-coined the cli-fi term on his own, separately and independently of both Bloom and Thill, without know either man, in a series of blog posts that mocked Al Gore and James Hansen and other climate activists for writing what Paco called "cli-fi" as a mocking term of humor. SEE LINK HERE!
LINK: https://medium.com/@clificentral/climate-skeptic-coins-own-iteration-of-cli-fi-term-to-mock-al-gore-james-hansen-3d03cd874f23?sourceIndex=3
Scenarios like this are common in ''Cli-Fi,'' or Climate Fiction, a new literary and movie genre that’s rising faster than the planet’s oceans. It originated in books and has found a second home on movie screens.
Recognizing Cli-Fi’s popularity an American journalist and PR consultant named Danny Bloom decided in 2014 to create an awards show – dubbed ''The Cliffies'' – that honored the best climate-themed movies of the year.
Some of the award categories are standard, like best movie and best actor, but a few are unique to the Cliffies, like best marketing campaign and most in tune with current climate science.
Unlike typical Hollywood award shows, the Cliffies are broadcasted online only, sans red carpet and lavish gowns. Anyone from climate scientists to ordinary movie buffs can participate in the nomination process.
You’ll probably recognize the blockbusters that swept up The Cliffie awards in 2014: “Noah,” starring Russell Crowe and Emma Watson, took home “Best Screenplay” while “Snowpiercer,” starring Chris Evans, won “Best Movie.”
But in 2015, a foreign film snatched most of the Cliffie awards: ''Taklub,'' a Filipino film, features a community reconstructing their lives in the wake of Super Typhoon Haiyan.
Cli-Fi movies like "Taklub," which reflect actual climate-induced disasters, are becoming more prevalent for a reason: people need them.
A BBC article says the “lure of the disaster movie” is based on a post-9/11 world filled with anxiety. The trauma of terrorist attacks, an increase in natural disasters, and urban riots are realistic situations moviegoers want to see on the screen to reassure themselves that they’ll survive even the worst experiences.
Through simulation, audiences can grapple with a world in which nothing is certain.
One thing we can count on is that natural disasters will keep occurring, both in fiction and in reality.
At their best, Cli-Fi films prompt us to pay closer attention to real climate change issues.
Climate change isn’t going to be fixed by watching movies, but it’s a great way to start the conversation.
Wired film critic and culture reporter Scott Thill who co-coined the cli-fi term on his own, separately and independently in two Wired film reviews in 2009 and 2010, without ever know Bloom at the time, is currently writing a non-fiction book about Cli-Fi and it is due out in paperback this December. His essay on the rise of cli-fi appeared in the Huffington Post in November 2014.
A rightwing climate skeptic and American humorist using the pen name of "Paco" also co-coined the cli-fi term on his own, separately and independently of both Bloom and Thill, without know either man, in a series of blog posts that mocked Al Gore and James Hansen and other climate activists for writing what Paco called "cli-fi" as a mocking term of humor. SEE LINK HERE!
LINK: https://medium.com/@clificentral/climate-skeptic-coins-own-iteration-of-cli-fi-term-to-mock-al-gore-james-hansen-3d03cd874f23?sourceIndex=3
Dylan Mullins was a summer intern in the communications department of the Sierra Club and is a junior at Berea College in Kentucky. In his spare time he enjoys biking, film making, and dancing in his socks to 1980s techno, and usually a mirror is involved.
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