Betty Schiel
Curator Focus
Focus
Focus
The Connection: Between Plants, Humans and Other Animals
We decided to conduct a thought experiment: Everything in our world is connected to everything else, in a living network in which we all depend on one another. But what if we stopped seeing humans as exceptional beings at the centre of our existence, and tried instead to adopt more-than-human perspectives?
This radical change of perspective puts the focus on the search for non-anthropocentric perspectives and thus a review of nature films in general. What stories can be told about this? What could films dealing with this look like?
The films’ directors allow plants, stones and animals to run riot, make noises and form swarms: they interlink all of this with music and sounds in novel combinations. Out of this, beguilingly beautiful new ways to view the world emerge – sometimes as a fast-paced flickering film, sometimes on the smallest atomic level. This new gaze opens up critical views of changeable social structures and offers utopian visions of the equal treatment of the players involved – views that inspire hope. What do we see when we look at others? How do ›the others‹ look back at us?
Curators:
Previous Focus topics have included:
After Reunification 1990 | 2020 (2020)
Image Traps (2019)
In Control (2017)
Comfort (2015)
Excess (2013)
NOW WHAT – Films about Getting out of Here (2011)
Freedom (2009)
Music (2007)
Money (2005)
Kiss-proof: who’s kissing who, when and why? (2001)
Uncanny Pleasure (1997)
The Subversive Power of Laughter (1993)
The Female Machine Saboteurs (1991)
Yours Truly
Christopher Murray, Charlotte Hoskins, Maddi Barber
Yours Truly follows the trail and stories of preserved animal bodies collected by Manchester Museum. Historic correspondence between museum directors, […]
