WE ARE ANIMALS: Documentary film ‘Cow’ was made to remind us of ‘the millions of non-human lives we use’
I hope this film in some small way can connect anyone who sees it not just to Cows and other non-human conscious animals but to that deep knowing and animal nature in ourselves. That we are all connected to everything living.
ANDREA ARNOLD: I grew up in north Kent on an estate surrounded by liminal wilderness. From early, I would spend entire days roaming wherever the fancy took me. Between estates and chalk pits and deserted old industrial spaces and woods and motorways. Out of this grew a deep love of insects and birds and animals and plants. Stray estate dogs, the Traveller ponies chained by the motorway, the fish and frogs in the water-filled bomb site, wild strawberries on the banks of the chalk pits…
I left home at 18 to live in London. Life changed dramatically in many ways. The city and pressures of adult life changed my relationship with nature. It wasn’t so immediate or accessible in the city. I continued to seek it as it mattered to me in a fundamental way. I learned to drive and drove out to it. Kept a stray dog I found in the street. Had cats. But I guess as I got busier with life I began to feel less connected. Nature sometimes felt like something that was “over there”. I would gaze out of train and car windows on my way somewhere feeling a little bereft. Separated.
One of the animals I saw most out of those windows was cows. Cows grazing in green fields. Pastoral, peaceful, romantic. Like a painting. I wondered about the reality of their lives and what that was really like. Making the film Cow emerged from that curiosity. Cows are so much part of our lives. They provide us with so much. But I felt disconnected from them. I liked the idea of jumping into that familiar scene. Seeing what their reality really was. Before we started filming, an international and prominent bunch of scientists signed the Cambridge Declaration on Consciousness in which they proclaimed that animals are conscious and aware to the degree that humans are. They said the evidence was overwhelming…
What does that mean? Do they feel pain, fear, desire, anger, affection, loss, frustration, empathy and intention? Like humans do? Are they individuals? Do they have distinct personalities? In all my relationships with animals, they for sure feel as if they have distinct likes and dislikes and individual quirks. So what about the animals we use for food? Cows? I wondered, if we watched a cow long enough, would we see any of this? I didn’t want in any way to attempt to get inside her head or suggest human emotions. I just wanted to watch her reactions to her daily reality. In all of its beauty and challenges and brutality. To look. To see. To see her…
We are nature. We are animals. The top of the food chain. But we are still animals and we have many animal instincts. Denying this, separating our selves and disconnecting from this is starting to seem more and more at our peril. Our relationship with the millions of non-human lives we use is very much part of our existence. I made Cow to invite engagement with that… I hope this film in some small way can connect anyone who sees it not just to Cows and other non-human conscious animals but to that deep knowing and animal nature in ourselves. That we are all connected to everything living. Cow premieres at the Cannes film festival on 8 July, 2021. SOURCE…
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