The commitment of film and media students to questions of social justice and representation of diversity on screen and in the media industries is evidence that they care deeply about the world they live in. However, those same students can be more reluctant to address climate change. Intellectually, it might seem like a specialist field for scientists; emotionally, it is a topic that raises anxiety. 

Helping humanities students overcome these barriers and gain agency in this pressing issue is the aim of a new module I have developed on environmental cinema and media.

As an animation historian, my love of this subject is the first motivation for my research and teaching. Likewise, film and media students commonly take our programmes because of enthusiasm for how movies make us feel and the stimulating intellectual ideas they raise.

Our new historical and theoretical module incorporates different ways of looking at the environmental implications of film and media. It is designed to provide a survey of the field in the first five weeks, followed by detailed case studies in the second half, ending on a positive future note considering how film and media can be used for environmental activism. The module considers fundamental questions about what we understand by “nature” or “environment” and the ways film and media shape our cultural understanding of them, whether in David Attenborough wildlife shows or science fiction and western genre films. 

As a global issue, climate change does not adhere to national borders, and the module incorporates examples from around the world, rejecting and decolonising conventional canons of film history. A video essay assessment provides students with an opportunity to develop audio-visual presentation skills and engage with this topic in the ways it is most encountered in the present day: through moving images and electronic media.

Here are five lessons I’ve learned from designing and teaching this module on environmental cinema and media.

1. No judgement: Students can feel ignorant or powerless when approaching this overwhelming global issue. The aim of raising the topic is not to shame them, but to help them feel they can contribute something valuable and gain agency.
2. Keep it impersonal: Student-centred learning is often productive, but in this case enabling students to adopt a neutral, distanced standpoint can overcome their personal feelings about the topic. 
3. Build on prior student knowledge: Situate environmental issues in terms of students’ knowledge and programme of learning. How can they use their disciplinary skills to think about this global issue?
4. Make it interactive: Students have a contemporary and diverse set of reference points and influences. Invite them to contribute their own examples for classroom discussion (such as material they’ve encountered on YouTube, TikTok or Weibo). The module tutor is understood here as a facilitator for learning rather than an expert.
5. Think local: Climate change can feel like an immense and ungraspable topic. Finding local case studies can help make it tangible and immediate. For instance, in Southampton the nearby Fawley oil refinery (one of Europe’s largest) provides a focus for examining how global issues resonate in local ways and are represented on film. 

Research-led teaching is a fundamental part of our programmes within film at the University of Southampton. In the past five years, my own work has explored the need to address the role of film and media in climate change, in both positive and negative aspects. Going beyond the traditional focus on art or entertainment, my research is exploring the role of animation within the oil industry and its complicity with the catastrophic impact of fossil fuel usage. My research on film as part of the infrastructure of resource-intensive and polluting industries sits alongside two other important strands of environmental studies of film and media. One is ecocritical readings of on-screen representation, such as the analysis of “cli-fi” (climate fiction) movies. The other area of growing attention is the material impact of media production, such as the Bafta albert initiative.

Screening oil industry advertising and other corporate films from my research allows students to recognise these are valid objects of study, alongside the Hollywood narrative feature films more commonly the focus in film studies, and which are also part of this module (such as There Will be Blood and Deepwater Horizon). Analysing industrial and sponsored film extends the skills students have learned throughout their degree, applying them in new contexts.

This module is offered in our final year, at a time when students are thinking about their own immediate and long-term future. That can be a scary prospect, on both a personal and planetary level. Our module aims to empower the students to see the contributions they can make, indicating new career paths they might not have considered (such as becoming a sustainability coordinator on film and TV sets) and applying the skills and knowledge they have learned over their degree to this urgent challenge. 

Malcolm Cook is associate professor in film studies and doctoral programmes director (film) at the University of Southampton.

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