A book launch for Tessa Laird’s publication Cinemal: The Becoming-Animal of Experimental Film, accompanied by a screening of five artist films from Aotearoa and Australia, introduced by Tessa Laird.
Like the flash of a tropical bird’s iridescent wing, cinema can be furtive and intensely beautiful—and it can leave a viewer craving more. Cinemal is Tessa Laird’s passionate inquiry into the ways that films mimic the majesty, mystery, and movements of animals, her field notes from countless hair-raising encounters with films in their natural habitat.
Published by University of Minnesota Press, Cinemal is part of a growing focus on nonhuman animals in film. Cinemal ventures to the “furry underbelly” of global experimental film practice, focusing on films from New Zealand, Australia, and South America. Laird examines how animals are depicted in film and analyzes the various animal qualities of cinema, like scratching and sniffing, vibrant colors, and voices (barking, howling, or echolocation). Burrowing into the work of filmmakers such as Arthur and Corinne Cantrill, Sriwhana Spong, and Ana Vaz, Laird’s energetic prose embodies the films she discusses, seamlessly combining personal anecdotes with art theory and philosophy to spread a wide sensory buffet.
Lively and optimistic, Laird uses cinematic animal tropes to encourage readers to rethink what it means to be human. She argues that, in a time of ecological collapse, such an impulse is a necessary means of imagining other, healthier ways of being in this world. Connecting us with the more-than-human, Cinemal lures us toward the beastly becomings of film and, ultimately, our own animal natures.
Books are NZ$35 and both cash and bank transfer options will be available at the launch. (Please note that EFTPOS is not available). The launch of Cinemal at CIRCUIT includes a screening of five works from Aotearoa and Australia by Nova Paul; Arthur and Corinne Cantrill with Ivor Cantrill; Sriwhana Spong; Tina Stefanou; Peter Waples-Crowe with Glynn Urquhart.
Tessa Laird is an artist, writer, and senior lecturer at the Victorian College of the Arts, University of Melbourne. Her books include a fictocritical exploration of color, A Rainbow Reader, and a cultural history of bats, Bat, in Reaktion Books’s celebrated Animal series.
