3/31,4/11,4/12, Berkeley, Animal Rights-related films

[Guest guest]

Info from:

 

Berkeley Organization for Animal Advocacy (BOAA)

c/o ASUC Office of Student Affairs

University of California

400 Eshleman Hall, MC 4500

Berkeley, CA 94720-4500

 

http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~boaa

 

A listing of animal rights-related films being screened at the Pacific Film

Archive.

 

Pacific Film Archive

2575 Bancroft Way, Berkeley

 

 

 

Meat

 

Frederick Wiseman (U.S., 1976)

Artist in Person

 

We open on a classic Western scene, cowboys and cattle roaming the range

against a Rocky Mountain backdrop. What comes after is less romantic. Meat

tracks the transformation of animals into consumer commodities, from the

feedlot where rations are calculated by computer, to the packing plant where

specialized assembly-line workers quickly, monotonously kill, skin, and

disembowel, to the office where jocular salesmen wheel and deal in parts and

poundage and union reps negotiate their contracts. (While workers process

six hundred head an hour, management worries that they have " too much free

time. " ) The slaughterhouse images are graphic, but their effect is less

shocking than quietly surreal: a merry-go-round of severed, flayed heads;

shrouded sides of beef gliding by like ghosts, seemingly under their own

power; a Judas goat leading a flock of lambs to their doom. Where viewers

might expect an outraged expose, Wiseman offers instead a clear-eyed

contemplation of a weirdly efficient business. - Juliet Clark

 

Photographed by William Brayne. (113 mins, B & W, 16mm)

 

PFA FILMSERIES: Frederick Wiseman

 

PFA PLAYDATE: Monday March 31, 2003, 3pm

 

Primate

 

Frederick Wiseman (U.S., 1974)

" Our artificial insemination will go as planned and we'll let nature take

its course, " declares a scientist at the Yerkes primate research center in

Atlanta, apparently oblivious to the contradiction in his statement. Primate

is an alarming, absurdist critique of the notion of scientific observation -

the more discomfiting in that we as viewers are implicated, watching the

people who watch the primates. Without narration to explain and soothe, we

are left to puzzle over the meaning of experiments that involve masturbating

orangutans and assessing which electrical frequencies produce the best

monkey erections. Responding to the public outrage sparked by the film's

harrowing images, the research center's director denounced Primate as " a

perversion, " a fitting choice of words given the clinical prurience of many

of the experiments. Although the film raises serious questions, after you've

heard a lab worker address her caged charges as " mama's babies, " you might

agree with Wiseman that " it's actually a rather bizarre comedy. " - Juliet

Clark

 

Photographed by William Brayne. (105 mins, B & W, 16mm)

 

PFA FILMSERIES: Frederick Wiseman

 

PFA PLAYDATE: Friday April 11, 2003, 7pm

 

Zoo

 

Frederick Wiseman (U.S., 1993)

" The power to define what spectacle is...separates humans from beasts and

helps keep the former at the top of the food chain. This is the paradox that

underlies Frederick Wiseman's gorgeous...documentary Zoo. Like Wiseman's

other films, Zoo, a seemingly fly-on-the-wall recording of a many-faceted

institution, manages to come down squarely on the side of the most

vulnerable " (Amy Taubin, Village Voice). The film documents keepers and

veterinarians caring for the animals at Miami's MetroZoo, emphasizing the

interrelatedness of the animal, human, ethical, financial, and scientific

aspects of the zoo's operation. The zoo " has the balmy, benign look of a

controlled environment but the cumulative effect is odd, sometimes queasy.

Absence of didactic narration creates suspense. Self-contained dramas are

gradually and skillfully resolved....[The film] never shies from gory or

unsettling events, including the clinical yet convivial postmortem

butchering of a stillborn rhino calf [which is] as surreal as Un Chien

Andalou " (Lisa Nesselson, Variety).

 

Photographed by John Davey. (130 mins, Color, 16mm)

 

PFA FILMSERIES: Frederick Wiseman

 

PFA PLAYDATE: Saturday April 12, 2003, 3pm

 

Racetrack

 

Frederick Wiseman (U.S., 1985)

" Wiseman wanders around Belmont finding ripe, illustrative material, most of

which fits into the abiding themes of his films, the melancholia peculiar to

industrial societies, the emotional wages of materialism. Horse racing is a

small industry comparatively, but it serves as a rich microcosm " (Tom

Shales, Washington Post). " Beginning with the birth of a thoroughbred and

running through to the conclusion of the 1981 Belmont Stakes in which

Summing upset heavily favored Pleasant Colony, Racetrack makes all other

movies about horse races, including the few good ones, look like a ride on a

cute little merry-go-round " (Gene Siskel, Chicago Tribune).

 

Photographed by John Davey. (114 mins, B & W, 16mm)

 

PFA FILMSERIES: Frederick Wiseman

 

PFA PLAYDATE: Saturday April 12, 2003, 9:20pm