Screening environmental challenges in China : three modes of ecocinema

With growing concerns in climatic change, environmental hazards and worsening pollution problems at a global scale, there is a recent flourish of ecocinema studies (or eco-film criticism) concerning the interplay between cinema and environmental issues. This paper aims to shed some lights on how ecocinema may make an effective tool to facilitate the promotion of better environmental governance; as well as to cultivate in film viewers better ecological awareness. By categorizing ecocinema into three major modes: deep ecology film; environmentalist film; and perception-training eco-film, this paper aims to illustrate the diverse environmental imaginations ecocritical films could offer, so as to invite cross-disciplinary conversations between eco-film criticism and other academic fields, to gather forces in discovering possible ways to tackle and overcome the many environmental challenges we are facing collectively in the rapidly deteriorating world.