Becoming Animal

Shot in and around Grand Teton National Park, this immersive, palpably rendered audiovisual essay draws together the distinct sensibilities of filmmakers Peter Mettler (The End of Time) and Emma Davie (I am Breathing) and philosopher David Abram (The Spell of the Sensuous) to forge a path into the places where humans and animals meet, where we pique our senses to witness the so-called natural world—which in turn witnesses us. Over a soundscape of shivering leaves and animal murmurs, rushing rivers and electronic voices, insects and automobiles, “Becoming Animal”embraces the sensory tools of cinema allowing us to behold inquisitive antelope and digital billboards; Buffalo block traffic while moose clash antlers and a snail’s body becomes a landscape of its own. Conscious of their own complicity with the animal world, the filmmakers invite us to explore this “more than human world”and recognize it for what it is: an exquisitely intricate system in which everything is alive and expressive, humans, animals and landscapes are inextricably interdependent, and there is no such thing as empty space.