Emma Davie, who runs the postgraduate department in Film at Edinburgh College of Art, has created the featured documentary Becoming Animal in collaboration with filmmaker Peter Mettler and radical writer and philosopher David Abram. The film, which was produced by Scottish Documentary Institute, arose from a rigorous four-year process of research, interrogation, filming and editing.
Becoming Animal proposes a different kind of nature film: shot in the Gran Teton Park in Wyoming, USA, it examines our shifting relationship to what we call “nature”. Becoming Animal is an urgent and immersive audiovisual quest, calling us to witness the natural world as it in turn witnesses us, prompting us to reflect on the very essence of what it means to inhabit our animal bodies.
Ellen Lande of the Modern Times Review calls the film “a magnificent documentary about the natural origins of what we consider to be man-made and the connection between man and nature”. In her review, Ellen also comments on the filmmakers’ “unique ability to elevate ideas, objects or concepts others may consider mundane into entities sacred and meaningful far beyond their physical presence”.
Becoming Animal has been nominated for many international awards including Best Documentary at CPH DOX, Edinburgh Film Festival, Documenta Madrid, and Docs Against Gravity.
