Ecophilosophy and the Human/Nonhuman Relation in Michelangelo Frammartino’s Alberi

Within the broad context of arboreal rites and symbologies of the tree, as well as in reference to metamorphoses into plants in ancient mythologies, and starting from transdisciplinarity, on which this volume is based as the interconnection and hybridization of disciplinar corpora, this chapter focuses on relations and interactions between human and nonhuman. In this regard, the representation of human body (corpus) metamorphosis appears to be a key aspect of ecological thinking, to sustain an environmentalist ethics based on the idea that all living beings form an ecologically interconnected system. Through the link between memory and tradition, present and past, visible and invisible, the metamorphosis of human being into a tree becomes the expressive means for a film-ecological investigation on the real that abandons anthropocentric vision and offers the sense of belonging to the world in an original, pure connection with the nonhuman. From an eco-philosophical perspective, the chapter proposes a reflection on Michelangelo Frammartino’s cinema and, in particular, focuses on his work Alberi (2013), in which the Italian filmmaker considers the Lucanian tradition of the romito as an expression of fusion and deep, inherent connection between humans and nature.