Nearest Neighbor at Concorto Film Festival

Animal House: a program of shorts curated by Vanessa Mangiavacca

August 19 to August 26, 2023

It is not a coincidence that cinema was born and reborn with the observation of the animal. From the beginnings of the moving image and the studies of Étienne Jules Marey to the scientific and experimental cinema of the origins, from the documentary to the big Hollywood, from mainstream cinema to auteur cinema: the way in which each era or film genre tells the story of the animal is synonymous with the transformation of our stare and how with difficulty our eyes are trying to undress – often inevitably failing! – of a certain amount of anthropomorphism. 

Therefore, Animal House returns for the second consecutive year as a curious telescope on the ways of cohabitation and interaction between man and animal.
A space between us and a crawling Earth with non-human beings, part of our imagination, vocabulary, symbolic, emotional or natural, social and political universe. Not a zoo, but rather a small and generous bestiary with a selection of short works involving dogs, cats, birds, wolves and salamanders. Animal House is a mosaic of points of view on the present, a suggestion to try to understand animals by entering into deep harmony with them despite not knowing the language. But also a chance to respect the uniqueness of the Other whatever its species, culture, gender, class or origin, to give image to new forms of community and different perspectives on the world.

All Cats Are Grey In The Dark by Lasse Linder, CH, 2019
Dede is Dead by Philippe Kastner, CZ, 2023
Der Molvhkongress (The Newt Congress) by Immanuel Esser and Matthias Sahli, CH, 2022
Naya by Sebastian Mulder, NL, 2021
Nearest Neighbor by Rebecca Baron and Douglas Goodwin, US, 2023
SSRC by Yalda Afsah, IR, UK, 2022