LOCATIONS
Animals in Film
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1861891318, REAKTION BOOKS, May 2003, 224pp, PB , 170x120mm
Price: $29.95
From Salvador Dalí to Walt Disney, animals have been a constant yet little-considered presence in film. Indeed, it may come as a surprise to learn that animals were a central inspiration to the development of moving pictures themselves.
Author Jonathan Burt points out that the mobility of animals presented technical and conceptual challenges to early film-makers, the solutions of which were an important factor in advancing photographic technology, accelerating the speed of both film and camera. The early filming of animals also marked one of the most significant and far-reaching changes in the history of animal representation, and has largely determined the way animals have been visualized in the twentieth century.
In approaching the extraordinary relationship between animals, photography, and cinema – between technological developments and the challenges posed by the animal as a specific kind of moving object – Burt draws on an immense variety of sources. His study draws on the work of Eadweard Muybridge and Jules-Etienne Marey; early safari films; the politics of animals in cinema; how movies and video have developed as weapons for animal rights activists; and the roles that animals have played in film from the avant-garde to Disney. Burt also explores the way that animal imagery has effected shifts in contemporary attitudes to animals.
Simon Burt is Writer in Residence at the Bush Theatre. Born in 1975, he studied drama at Loughborough University from 1994-97 and with the Royal Court Young Writers Programme in 1999-2000. His first play, Untouchable, was staged at the Bush Theatre last autumn.