Sometimes there are too many films to cover. Today, the San Diego Black Film Festival kicks off and UCSD's ArtPower holds a screening of "Bestiaire," and then on Saturday Reading Cinemas launches another month of 40 Foot Films. Too much to see!
Denis Côté in his 2012 documentary "Bestiarie" considers what we see when we look at animals. Animals have often been used to reflect us through allegories or to teach us moral lessons as in Aesop's Fables. Côté's documentary takes us through a compendium of animals in a kind of Peter Greenaway fashion.
I have not had a chance to screen the film but the trailer intrigued me and may intrigue you.
Here is the program description of the film: "Popular in medieval Europe, bestiaries were catalogs of beasts featuring exotic animal illustrations, zoological wisdom, and ancient legends. Denis Côté’s startling Bestiaire unfolds like a filmic picture book where both humans and animals are on display. As we observe them, they also observe us, and one another. Fascinating creatures like buffalo, hyenas, zookeepers, zebras, taxidermists, rhinos, and ostriches silently inhabit uncluttered, beautifully composed frames. Using the film form to challenge the very notion of representation, Bestiaire is an elegant, bewitching meditation on the nature of perception and the boundaries between nature and civilization."
As part of ArtTalks! there will be a post-screening conversation with producer Sylvain Corbeil. The film screens at 8pm at UCSD's Calit2 as part of ArtPower.
Companion viewing: Peter Greenaway's "Windows" and "Drowning By Numbers," "Baxter," "Dr. Doolittle"
