The experimental film 'Ingresso Animali Vivi' creates an atmosphere of discomfort related to the human habit of eating animals, and prevailing human attitude towards these beings as creatures that serve us as we have determined and for this purpose developed an industrial-economic system that we have always taken for granted. Even if we will not peek behind the walls of the slaughterhouse, because we cannot and do not want to watch the mass callous killing of the helpless on the strip, we will buy, prepare and eat the meat without remorse and without unnecessary questions.
JANCO HEIDL: The experimental film ‘Ingresso animali vivi’ had its world premiere at the 52nd International Film Festival in Rotterdam (International Film Festival Rotterdam, 25.01.-05.02.2023) in the Netherlands, and then toured several other festivals in the country and around the world. , including those of a documentary profile (Kosovo Dokufest, Macedonian MakeDox), and these days it was shown in our country at the 21st Liburnija, the Croatian documentary film festival in Opatija (August 22 – August 26).
The Italian title ‘Ingresso animali vivi’ means “the entry of living animals”, and we will see this inscription towards the end of the work, written on a metal plate inside the building where almost all of the action takes place, let’s call it – the wandering of a dog through the large empty rooms of the plant that we suspect, that is, almost we certainly recognize the purpose, although it remains unrevealed. And yet suggested, associated, indicated clearly enough, (almost) unequivocally, quietly eerie without a single recording of any directly disturbing motive. The most immediate images of horror are realized with animation, relatively distantly stylized, technically cold, with the impression of restrained objectivity (animated objectivity, is it possible?), but of sufficient significance.
Although most experimental films are characterized by ambiguity and mystery, so it is mostly difficult to determine with certainty what exactly they want to say – because their intention is only to sharpen the trigger for a wide range of experiential interpretations – we can quite reliably perceive the leading intention of this one. And it is to create an atmosphere of discomfort related to the human habit of eating animals, prevailing human attitude towards these beings as creatures that serve us as we have determined and for this purpose developed an industrial-economic system that we have always taken for granted. Even if we will not peek behind the walls of the slaughterhouse, because we cannot and do not want to watch the mass callous killing of the helpless on the strip, we will buy, prepare and eat the meat steak without remorse and without unnecessary questions.
In this text, we have already explained much more than Grubić’s more subtle film shows. A hint of possible horror is expressed at the very beginning, in the animated opening (animated sections are the work of Marko Meštrović), whose first images of a long (1 min. 12 s), continuous frame are nothing more than a dull red color, which a good part of the audience will surely associate with blood, and with the sounds of stylized industrial noise – we can also consider it as music – from far away, beyond the horizon, from the white dot in the middle of the picture, to the x-ray entrance to the interior, an industrial building with a strict, functionally square structure will approach us, which in both the panoramic and interior view could remind of the death camps.
After an emphatically aestheticized animated picture in motion, a cut (edited by Damir Čučić) to a relatively unremarkable static night shot (cinematographer Bojan Mrđenović) of the real world, the exterior of probably that very building, with a real, startling industrial noise, a sound that will be roughly cut ( the sound designer is Iva Kraljević, and the mixer and sound editor is Ivan Zelić) with each frame, (seemingly) without tuning and equalization, which will also be a low-noticeable, but powerfully effective factor in inciting unrest.
One dog, it won’t be a stray, decided to go in there, something prompts him to see, he sniffs what is between the walls, behind a high and solid fence. Somehow (by the decision of the filmmakers, because we don’t see how) they will overcome the obstacles that seem insurmountable and sneak through the object, sometimes darkened by deep night shadows pierced by sharp quadrangular islands of light, sometimes whitish, as if illuminated by the rays of the day, everywhere clean, shiny, paved with dull white ceramic tiles. A calm, orderly, empty place, recorded in photographic static shots, as if roaring with anxiety, of which neither the dog nor the viewer can see a trace or evidence, except possibly a series of hooks hanging from the ceiling and heralding the agonizing work of the plant during the working hours of the plant.
It is hard to believe that Ingresso animali vivi documents, at least reconstructively, the wandering of that (or another) dog in that deserted space, and it seems that documenting the condition and appearance of an authentic building (or several of them, since we the sign-up notice informs that the filming locations are slaughterhouses in northern Italy), while the participation of a dog that, most likely, acts according to the director’s imagination and performs according to his instructions, would belong to the realm of a feature film. Therefore, Grubić’s painting skillfully combines the genres of animation, documentary and fiction, in an experimental way, i.e. with the result that “deviation from the established and standardized explores other, neglected or blocked possibilities”, as Hrvoje Turković writes about the purpose of experimental film in the Film Lexicon. Harmonious, measured, thoughtful, calm, muted, yet pulsating in a strange key, Ingresso animali vivi very successfully and impressively leaves a taste of astringency, opposed to a kind of of sweetness which, largely naturally, without coercion or imposition, is aroused by a curious, most likely benevolent, but in the meeting with the building and working complex that attracted his attention, a completely powerless dog. SOURCE…