How are climate change, weather-related disasters, food and water insecurity, and energetic and infrastructural collapse narrated audiovisually in the most environmentally vulnerable areas of the Planet? This book addresses this and related questions by adopting a local and transdisciplinary perspective on river deltas from different areas of the world.
River deltas have historically been hotspots for human civilizations, as populations settled in their fertile grounds seeking resources and opportunities for prosperity. Despite this, the terrains and livelihoods of those who rely on them are under threat from human exploitation, environmental degradation, and rapidly accelerating climate change. Inspired by the UN Sustainable Development Goals, this book provides a range of focused audiovisual analyses of deltaic spaces. Ranging across a variety of media, including documentary filmmaking, animation, photography, collaborative comic making, participatory visual art practices, soundwalking, and film analysis, it examines the role that contemporary audiovisual media play in forging global environmental imaginaries. In doing so, it adopts a transdisciplinary approach to the Blue Humanities from countries across the world, including Canada, Bolivia, Brazil, Greece, Nigeria, Senegal, India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam.
List of Figures List of Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction: River Delta Futures: Endangered Communities in Audiovisual Media, Francisco-J. Hernández Adrián and Angelos Theocharis Part 1: Emergences 1. Tracks, traces, and signs: Multispecies justice in the river deltas of Arctic Alaska and the Sundarban, Subhankar Banerjee and Finis Dunaway 2. Collective ethno-graphic storytelling: The making of Delta Tales, Beatriz Belo, Benoit Ivars, Franz Krause, Karis Gruben, Nora Horisberger, Pamplumus, Sandro Simon, and Thant Myat Htoo 3. Picturing Bonbibi: Representations of the forest goddess and climate change impact in the Sundarbans, Niki Black and Maggie Roe Part 2: Flows 4. The Mangrove School Project: Untold stories of children from the margins, Anindita Saha and Vinita Damodaran 5. Delta futures and the roles of water puppetry in the Red River Delta, Vietnam, Maggie Roe and Niki Black 6. On the Brahmaputra Riverbanks: Making a documentary film about vulnerability and adaptation, Emilie Cremin Part 3: Disappearances 7. Re-imagining the unimaginable in the Niger Delta, Sandrine Uwase Ndahiro 8. Hazardous landscapes and environmental justice: Indigenous documentary films from Eastern India, Sneha Krishnan and Nitesh Lohan Part 4: Echoes 9. Seas of Silver: Songs to reduce plastic waste in Vietnamese waterways, Lonán Ó Briain 10. Musical Mangrove: Community-based media making in the Sundarbans, Elja Roy 11. Sonic explorations of Lake Vistonida and the Nestos Delta, Marinos Koutsomichalis Afterword: Material tales of adaptation and sustainability: Imagining future Living Deltas, Andy Large
Francisco-J. Hernández Adrián is Associate Professor of Hispanic and Visual Culture Studies at Durham University, UK Angelos Theocharis is Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in Media, Culture and Heritage at the School of Arts and Cultures at Newcastle University, UK
