Destroyed Be Forever All the Bonds of Nature

2020, 22 min
UK

Destroyed Be Forever All the Bonds of Nature is an experimental assemblage of found and original material that explores the role of the moving image in both revealing and shaping human relations with non-human animals. Taking its title from a famous aria in Mozart’s The Magic Flute, which has been performed by countless parrots on YouTube, it probes some of the ways in which the camera is used to reduce real animals to abstract objects for human pleasure and knowledge. Through cinema, animals are at our disposal, yet kept safely at a distance, deepening artificial boundaries between human and non-human, nature and culture, and wilderness and civilization. Kids film animals at the zoo, but find them boring compared to those on YouTube and in wildlife documentaries. People use live cams to monitor animals in the ‘wild’ from the comfort of their homes. Animals ‘invade’ human spaces, and humans respond by capturing them on video, suggesting just how much they don’t belong. Animal movement and development that is either too fast or too slow for the human eye is analyzed frame by frame. Yet the film also expands beyond this critique to suggest ways in which the cinematic medium might be used to decenter an anthropocentric perspective by highlighting the agency and subjectivity of non-human animals, both those we come into contact with on screen and in our daily lives.

Direction / Camera / Edit / Sound: Shelby Prichard

Festival Premiere: Slow Film Festival, London, UK 2024