Large-scale mining activities operate worldwide and, while supplying the hegemonic economic system, produce a series of adverse and generally invisible effects and impacts on nature and historically vulnerable populations. In Minas Gerais and the Brazilian Amazon, in Chile and Portugal, as the race for gold, iron ore or lithium reserves is renewed, the threat to watercourses, forests, and the ways of life of traditional peoples and communities is intensifying.

During the MINAR Environmental Film Festival - Machinations of the World: Mining, Affections and Resistance, we will present a series of documentaries and feature films that address this issue, which is fundamental in the face of the devastation of nature, sociabilities and cultures and the ongoing climate emergency. In this sense, we ask: How can the destruction be halted, and alternative roads be travelled for the occupation of territories and socio-economic development? How can we learn from the communities that are confronting mega-mining and undermining neoliberal advancement strategies in various ways?

To answer these questions, in addition to screening the documentaries, on 23, 24 and 25 July we will occupy different spaces in Coimbra with images, poetry, and performance, artistic languages that promote broader perceptions and weave other worlds. We want to promote dialogue, forge alliances, and build colourful parachutes for a less bleak, more conscious and, as we hope, radically different future. In addition to an exhibition of moving images, this is above all an invitation to transformation.
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The Festival is organized by the Ecology and Society Lab of the Centre for Social Studies (ECOSOC) of University of Coimbra. Partners: Gil Vicente Academic Theater, Casa da Esquina, ECO - Animals and Plants in Cultural Productions about the Amazon Basin (ERC Consolidator Grant no. 101002359) research project, film festivals Cinefront - International Festival Amazônida de Cinema de Fronteira and ParaDocma - Viver melhor [a cidade], é preciso! (5.ª edição) and Liquidâmbar.

Organisers | Ananda Martins Carvalho, Harlon Homem de Lacerda, Jaili Ivinai Buelvas Diaz, Lúcia Fernandes, Miguel Artur de Ávila Carranza and Tiago Calado