SCREENING: CATHERINA CRAMER & GIULIETTA OCKENFUß UNLEASH THE BEAST - CHAPTER II: HAGENBECKS ZOO, 2021

CHAPTER II—HAGENBECKS ZOO (2021) is the second part of the multi-part video series UNLEASH THE BEAST by Catherina Cramer and Giulietta Ockenfuß, which deals with questions of origin and identity.
Based on real and fictional interviews as well as the use of found footage, Part II follows a water monkey’s search for her own biography. The protagonist reveals that she was captured against her will by the founders of the famous Hagenbeck Zoo, shipped to Hamburg and performed there in a vaudeville show. In response to her own experience, she founds a protest movement that campaigns for the rights of wild animals. In a partly humorous way, an improvised dialogue is thus created in combination with text fragments from Franz Kafka’s Report for an Academy, which critically questions the Hagenbeck company’s entanglements in the 19th century wildlife trade.

UNLEASH THE BEAST was supported by the Hessische Kulturstiftung, the Kunststiftung NRW and the Filmwerkstatt Düsseldorf.

Catherina Cramer is a LKART studio scholar 2019, a program initiated by JSC in 2018.