ABSTRACT
Supply chains connect materials with manufacture and assembly, with consumers and ultimately with disposal. Materials, manufacture and governance of goods and services are further complicated by the circuits of materials, energy and waste that cycle through them. This chapter focuses on the logistical infrastructure of cinema production and distribution, taking examples from device fabrication, globally distributed film production, containerised and streaming distribution, and the imbrication of cinema with financialisation. The failure of COP26 and, it is argued, of capital as a whole to deal with its destructive tendency forces ecocriticism to look more closely at the global trade in media devices, infrastructures, labour and content. Economic policies as much as creativity drive the “global studio” that is now the networked source and destination of film production. Thus far, ecology and economics have been deadly enemies. Can cinema provide a way to overcome their mutual suicide pact?
