EXCLUSIVELY AT IFI

IFI IRISH SHORTS
This screening will include Jimmy Murakami’s IFB-funded poignant animation, Sandpiper, about a young boy and an injured bird. 5 minutes, 2008, Colour.

French documentarist Nicolas Philibert won hearts with his primary-school portrait Être et avoir, and returns with this quietly captivating study of the star attraction in a Parisian zoo. Nenette is a grande dame of the orangutan world, having outlived a series of husbands in her glassed-in enclosure, and now spends her days eating, mooching and watching a constant stream of human visitors. Philibert’s decision to keep the camera trained solely on this resplendent primate and compose the soundtrack from assembled eavesdropped comments by sundry unseen gawpers, proves uncommonly intriguing. Watching Nenette as the film unfolds tends to intensify her mystery, while what we hear seemingly reveals the various spectators’ psychological projections onto this unknowable animal captive. It’s surprisingly comic and utterly fascinating. (Notes by Trevor Johnston).