Bestiari, erbari, lapidari
overview
This both encyclopedic and essayistic film successively explores the worlds of animals, plants and minerals in three acts. In the first part, built around archive footage, scholars analyze the recording and classification of animals and their behavior, as well as the care of animals and experimenting on them, as different forms of appropriation—a method to determine a hierarchy, with human beings at the top.
In the following acts, the film tilts and shifts this anthropocentric worldview. The second, poetically observational part, shot in the botanical gardens of Padua in Italy, argues that plants surpass and overshadow humans in almost every respect. The third act, which again has its own tone and documentary approach, reflects on the role that stones play in war and destruction, as well as in commemoration.
This ambitious film does not consider animals, plants and minerals as elements from a world “around us”. Within the formalistic structure, a web of cross-connections is created in which humans are not the omniscient center.