Shelby Prichard (QMUL) - 2021-22 Students
s.r.prichard@qmul.ac.uk

An exploration of cinematic methods for staging intersubjective encounters between human and non-human animal worlds

Amidst the current ecological crisis and mass extinctions, there is an urgent need to develop radically new ways of thinking about and engaging with animals. In contrast to the traditional distancing effect of visual media that establishes animals as objects of knowledge for human subjects (Haraway 1991), this research project investigates the ways in which experimental filmmaking techniques can disrupt the humanist orientation of traditional wildlife film in favour of staging more ‘horizontal’ encounters between human and non-human animals. My aim is to propose alternative ways of cinematically representing knowledge about animals (and its limits) that refuse the disembodied and objectifying perspective often associated with the ‘hard’ sciences. This project will involve both theoretical and practical methods, resulting in a written output and two short films that propose cinematic methods for exploring animal modes of being and (re)positioning the human viewer as enmeshed within more-than-human worlds.

Primary supervisor: Dr Sasha Litvintseva, QMUL
Secondary supervisor: Dr Anat Pick, QMUL