The Animals Film is a critically acclaimed feature documentary film about the exploitation of animals, directed by Victor Schonfeld and Myriam Alaux, and narrated by actress Julie Christie. The film was first released in 1982.
The Animals Film presents a survey of the uses of animals in factory farming, as pets, for entertainment, in scientific and military research, hunting, etc. The film also profiles the international animal rights movement. The film incorporates secret government footage, cartoons, newsreels and excerpts from propaganda films, and has an original music score composed by Robert Wyatt.
The Animals Film was distributed in cinemas in Britain, Australia, Germany, the USA, and was broadcast on numerous television networks. The British network, Channel Four, transmitted the film during the Channel's third night on air in November 1982. It generated front pages news in Britain at the time because Channel 4 broadcast a two hour version of the film shorn of seven minutes of its concluding sequence. The original 136 minute film released in cinemas had been approved with no cuts by the British Board of Film Censors, but the Independent Broadcasting Authority instructed Channel 4 that certain scenes in the film could 'incite crime or lead to civil disorder.' [1] Jonathan Porritt and David Winner write that, with over one million viewers, the screening is regarded as "an important moment in the growth of public awareness of animal exploitation."[2] Channel Four screened it again during its Banned series in 1991.
The Sunday Times (UK) film critic Alan Brien wrote of the film: "The most impressive film maudit, possibly too hot to handle...stuffed with footage never before shown, and a wealth of newly-shot material often taken undercover, which documents...mankind's degradation, exploitation, and often pointless torture, of the creatures who share our planet. ...Proves, beyond contradiction, that this behaviour is not just random or personal but part of our organised society, with drug companies, government departments, scientists, military authorities, factory farmers, university research laboratories, for their own selfish ends, for profit in money or prestige. I do not know when I have come out of a screening so moved by the power of the cinema as a medium to transform the entire sensibility of an audience." [3]
In 2007 a DVD of The Animals Film was released with a new director's cut, via Beyond the Frame. In 2008 the British Film Institute released a remastered DVD in the UK, incorporating both the original uncensored cinema version and the director's cut.
In 2010 the BBC World Service broadcast One Planet: Animals & Us, a radio documentary series in which Victor Schonfeld investigates why little has changed since the making of The Animals Film.
See also
* [1] Earthlings, 2006 * [2] Behind the Mask, 2006
Notes
1. ^ British Film Institute, The Animals Film booklet, 2008, p. 8-9 2. ^ Porritt and Winner 1988, cited in Garner, Robert. Animals, Politics, and Morality. Manchester University Press, 2004, p. 80. 3. ^ British Film Institute, The Animals Film booklet, 2008, p. 22
External links
* [1] [3] Beyond the Frame DVD * [2] [4] British Film Insititute DVD * [3] [5] BBC World Service 'One Planet: Animals & Us' * [4] [6] "Shock and Awe" by Victor Schonfeld - The Guardian, July 5, 2007 * [5] [7] "They Are What You Eat" by Julie Christie - The Guardian, September 26, 2008 * [6] [8] "Fancy a Roast this Sunday? First Watch The Animals Film" by Ken Russell - The Times, September 30, 2008 * [9] The Animals Film at the Internet Movie Database
[10] Categories: Films about animal rights
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