Film Programme

The film programme for Animal Cinema is an experiment. For the first time, a biologist and a curator have collaborated to create a film programme in which artistic and scientific perspectives on animals are given equal weight. The resulting short history of the animal film is also an animalistic history of film. The very first film stars were not humans but animals, such as the galloping horse in the famous photographic series by Eadweard Muybridge or the animals in Étienne-Jules Mareys motion studies, which are among the very earliest films (e.g. his Fish from 1891). There is also at least one film that was itself authored by an animal; Oedipe, by the monkey Capucine. Nieto’s documentary of the same name on the making of this film-historical sensational is part of the programme.

The programmers have excavated numerous weird, beautiful and sometimes shocking finds from various archives. There’s Kaiser Wilhelm in Hagenbeck’s zoo as well as Seine Hoheit auf Fasanenjagd (Bilder vom Hof des Großherzogs von Mecklenburg-Schwerin) [His Royal Highness Hunting Pheasant (Pictures from the residence of the Grand-Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin)].

The tragic Hinrichtung des wildgewordenen Riesenelefanten Arno [The Slaughter of the Rogue Elephant Arno] and the Soviet Theater der Tiere [Animal Theatre] have been restored especially for the programme. In the latter, the methods of animal taming can be seen in clear analogy to the conditioning of humans in Stalinism. Colonial hunting films (Im Negerdorf - Jagd der Flusspferde [In the Negro Village – Hippopotamus Hunt]) are juxtaposed to scientific films on the hunting rituals of indigenous peoples (Jagd mit Pfeil und Bogen auf Beutelmäuse [Hunting Marsupial Mice with bow and arrow] und Shooting the Animal). A highlight of the programme is the rediscovery of the films of Heinz Meinhardt, the first scientist in the GDR and one of the first in the world to study animal behaviour. In contrast to his colleague Dian Fossey, whose gorilla studies became famous throughout the scientific world, he  modestly  became a mere “honourary wild boar”.

Animals are also an important subject for artistic filmmakers. One of the most famous being William Wegman, who made hundreds of films and photos of his Weimaraner ‘Man Ray’. His short sketches make palpable the respectful way the two interact with each other. In Monkey Performance, Joanna Rytel dances for her monkeys, thus turning the tables on the voyeuristic gaze implicit in the usual practice of having animals perform for humans. Not the animal itself but rather the animal-film is the theme of Christoph Keller’s Encyclopaedia Cinematographica, a cinema-installation that will run before each programme.

Animal Cinema aims at awakening consciousness to the way humans see animals. What do people see when they look at animals? What are the consequences of this way of seeing, especially for the animals themselves? Can animal films restore dignity to animals? The focus is on ‘real’ animal films, where real animals have been filmed. The beloved anthropomorphisms of animation films, in which animals appear as symbols for the human, have been deliberately excluded.

Among the guests who have kindly agreed to take part in discussion are Dr. Johannes Grossman, primatologist from the Max-Planck-Institut, Dr. Frank D. Steinheimer, Project director of the Naturkundlichen Universitätsmuseum Halle (Saale) [Natural History Museum of the University of Halle], the shepherd Christian Winz, as well as the actor and author Hanns Zischler.