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Amphibious Gazes

Speakers:
Fernando Segtowick (Filmmaker)
Maeve Jinkings (Actress)
Chair: Jamille Pinheiro Dias (ILCS/CLACS, University of London)

*Note: This seminar will be in Portuguese.

This conversation will aim to articulate critical vocabularies surrounding environmental film, focusing on the harmful consequences of utilitarian imaginaries of water and earth. It will examine parallels between "When the Earth Trembles" (2017) and "Amazon Mirror" (2020), exploring how both films cast their gaze on events of environmental devastation that have forever altered landscapes in Brazil. The building of the Tucuruí Dam in the Amazon and the Samarco mining disaster along the Rio Doce basin in Minas Gerais had very different circumstances and outcomes. However, these events share a common thread: the manner in which infrastructure projects can precipitate extractive violence that impacts both human and nonhuman riverine populations. How do these legacies of devastation feature in recent Brazilian cinema? This GERMINATIONS event will bring together filmmaker Fernando Segtowick and actress Maeve Jinkings to discuss their experiences in environmentally-focused audiovisual production, shedding light on amphibious survival strategies in the aftermath of an environmental catastrophe.




BIOS
Maeve Jinkings (Actress, Brazil)
Born in Brasília, Brazil, in 1976, Maeve Jinkings is an internationally acclaimed actress who studied at the University of São Paulo’s School of Dramatic Arts and Antunes Filho’s Center for Theatrical Research. Jinkings began her career with notable roles in Brazilian cinema, including "Neighboring Sounds", "Love, Plastic and Noise", and "Neon Bull". Her performance in "Aquarius" earned accolades at the Cannes Film Festival. Jinkings has continued to excel in both short and feature films, winning awards for her roles in "Charcoal" and "Toll", both directed by Carolina Markowicz. Her collaboration with Netflix in the series "Criminal Code" was met with widespread success. Jinkings also starred in "When the Earth Trembles" ("Quando a Terra Treme"), a short film directed by Walter Salles in 2017, examining the aftermath of the collapse of the Mariana dam in Minas Gerais, Brazil. The film is part of the collective project "Where Has the Time Gone?" initiated by Jia Zhang-ke from China.

Fernando Segtowick (Filmmaker, Brazil)
Born in Belém, Brazil, in 1971, filmmaker Fernando Segtowick studied journalism at the Universidade Federal do Pará. He is a co-founder of Marahu Films, a production company based in Belém specialising in content creation for various platforms. Segtowick has made short films and television series focusing on Amazonia. He participated in the 2019 Rotterdam Lab with his film project "Passagem Esperança." His short film "Matinta" (2010), starring actress Dira Paes, won awards at the Brasília Festival (2010), while the short documentary "No Movimento da Fé" (2013) received accolades at the CINE PE – Recife Film Festival (2014) and the Curta Carajás Festival (2014). His debut feature film "Amazon Mirror" (2020) was screened at the Berlin International Film Festival, Festival de Cine de Cartagena de Índias, DokuFest, and Festival du Film Etnographie Jean Rouch, among others.


All are welcome to attend this free seminar, which will be held online via Zoom at 17:00 BST (UK time). You will need to register in advance to receive the online joining link. Please click on the Book Now button at the top of the page to register.


PROGRAMME

Thursday 2 May
Nature isn’t Binary, Land isn’t Dry 

Speakers
Sara Granados (The Bartlett’s Development Planning Unit, UCL) 
Jorge Díaz (Cell & Developmental Biology, UCL) 
Chair: Lisa Blackmore (University of Essex)
*Note: This event will be in Spanish

Thursday 23 May 
Spongy Aquifers, Messy Publics

Speaker: Andrea Ballestero (USC)
Chair: Alejandro Ponce de León (UC Davis/CLACS, University of London)

Thursday 30 May
Amphibious Gazes

Speakers:
Fernando Segtowick (Filmmaker)
Maeve Jinkings (Actress)
Chair: Jamille Pinheiro Dias (ILCS/CLACS, University of London)
Note: This conversation will be in Portuguese



GERMINATIONS 2024: Amphibious Practice and Research


Zones of emergence in the Environmental Humanities take form in the crossings of disciplines, knowledges and territories. These confluences can make practice and research amphibious in the thematic concerns they probe in liquid ecologies and in their tendency toward non-binary, transdisciplinary methods. In discussions surrounding ecosystems in art, ecology, and the social sciences, such adaptive approaches are particularly generative to think through and care for a world marked not by its fixity but by its flows. Attending to practices that flourish in fluid territories, GERMINATIONS is convening three conversations with researcher-practitioners working across theoretical approaches, arts-science intersections, technolegal landscapes, and cultural production that deal with amphibious modes of being and doing. 

These encounters are an invitation to consider how amphibious practices draw on ecological knowledge, adaptive strategies, and creative resilience to enable ways of living in shifting and indeterminate environments. In the face of pressing issues such as climate change, attacks on diversity and resource scarcity, GERMINATIONS will highlight the ways in which communities resist, safeguarding their distinctive coexistence across amphibious realms as they intersect with evolving legal and technological paradigms emerging in water governance and sociopolitical frameworks. The series also seeks to engage with practices where art and science are interwoven and mutually imbricated, probing forms of life that resist definable categorisation, such as species and gender.

In 2024, the GERMINATIONS series welcomes speakers Jorge Díaz (UCL), Sara Granados (UCL), Andrea Ballestero (University of Southern California), Maeve Jinkings (actress), and Fernando Segtowick (filmmaker, Marahu Filmes). This initiative is hosted and supported by CLACS and is a cross-institutional collaboration convened by Lisa Blackmore (University of Essex), Paul Merchant (University of Bristol), Ainhoa Montoya (CLACS, University of London/CSIC), and Jamille Pinheiro Dias (CLACS, University of London). This year, GERMINATIONS also has the support of Alejandro Ponce de León (UC Davis/CLACS, University of London).


Image on event listing: Sara Granados, Coral de río, 2022.
Image above: Amazon Mirror/Fernando Segtowick/Marahu Filmes


Please consider supporting CLACS's mission to train the next generation of scholars in Latin American and Caribbean Studies: https://ilcs.sas.ac.uk/research-centres/centre-latin-american-caribbean-studies-clacs/support-clacs