Bestiary

The documentary was filmed at an animal park in Quebec. The camera watches the animals. The animals watch the camera back. There is no speech, no narrator, no music. All you hear is the sound of the place itself. The film opens on one scene. Art students are drawing a stuffed deer. Then it moves into a taxidermist’s workshop. After that it goes out into the park in winter. The animals wait in narrow enclosures. People look at them. The looking works in both directions. The film does not explain this, it only shows it. Its rhythm is slow and patient. In medieval Europe a book of beasts was called a bestiary. The name comes from there. The seventy two minute documentary carries the signature of Denis Côté, a Canadian and French co-production finished in 2012.