Animals that are missing

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Part I and Part II

Short experimental film 9´24´´ and 

Idea and initiative: Neda Kovinic

Performers: Simonida Zarkovic, Nevena Radulovic, Neda Kovinic

Images (camera and edit) : Lautaro Ruminot and Belén Pellicano

Sound: Yassine Oulhiq, Francisca Gonzales del Solar

Production: Filmakademie BW, Academy Schloss Solitude, Neda Kovinic

Stuttgart 2023

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Screened at Akademie Schloss Solitude Winter Feast December 1st 2023.

 

 

Animals that are missing came out from a collaboration between Serbian artists-in-residence at the Akademie Schloss Solitude with Argentinian, Chilean and Morocco filmmakers, artists-in-residence at FABW at the time.

In Kovinic`s recent film there’s a clear focus on environmental concerns, embodied experiences of eco-anxiety, and the palpable sense of loss of closeness with other-than-human. The film emphasizes the importance of emotional and experiential reconnection with the environment as an act of world care. Performers are dancing and singing in a playful way, carefully listening and sensing the environment they walk through. Film refers to the hopeless distance between humans and animals and their fearful hidden presence in human immediacy.

The protagonists in the film are guided with thoughts: “In the last two centuries animals have gradually disappeared. Today we live without them. And in this new solitude, anthropomorphism makes us doubly uneasy." ( John Berger, Why Look at animals?)

Dancers and singers imagined and participated in a “choreography” of life in the magical forest surrounding the Akademie Schloss Solitude. The film was developed in the context of the castle which was a hunting retreat place of the duke built in the 18th century. They hunted deer and wild boar that inhabit this forest. Nowadays it is almost impossible to face these animals in the forest. Except when in stress they jump to run away from us, from human footsteps that they hear. Passers-by walking in the forest could rarely meet those animals directly but many times could have heard their convulsive escape from human footsteps. One can often see a tail of a frightened deer jumping to escape, or a wild boar running noisily somewhere far away from passers-by.

Protagonists with their dance evoked the stress of a squirrel that jumps convulsively when hearing walk in the forest. They questioned if we could identify with the jump of a deer when it hears us stepping in the forest and could it be my spasm in an anxiety attack. Are we gentle and timid like a deer or would we rather recognise in ourselves the rebellious and fighting energy of a wild boar that does not respect private property, and how might we use our bodies to represent those traits? Did you catch a glimpse of the deer?

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