New Growth: To Film Like a Plant

Abstract

This article asks whether cinema, specifically contemporary experimental cinema, might enable new ways of thinking about, and caring for, plants. Through an analysis of Karel Doing’s film The Mulch Spider’s Dream (2018), it displays how cinema may showcase more-than-human subjectivity by conveying phytosemiosis, a plant’s way of signifying. Afterwards, it investigates a vegan cinema, and explores how the style of existence exemplified by plants may be drawn on to design a more sustainable way of producing cinematic media.