HUMAN WILD

“HUMAN WILD is an unclassified fiction film, crossing genres like documentary, nature film and thriller.”

“With an audiovisual language that more than fills the screen and a multitude of audio channels, HUMAN WILD is a true cinema experience.” Karsten Meinich, Montages.

HUMAN WILD

A film by Marthe Thorshaug

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Length: 48 minutes

Format: Digital Cinema 4K

Cast:
Sarah Jaggi
Martin Thorshaug
Inga Live Kippersund
Jon Arne Arnseth
Johanne-Margrethe Kippersund Nesdal
Philipp Stengele
Ingeborg Flagstad

Crew:
Director/Script/Cinematographer/Editor:
Marthe Thorshaug

Original film music:
Dan-Ola Persson

Produced by:
Nerhagen Productions

Financial support:
Østnorsk Filmsenter
Norwegian Visual Artists Association

Screenings:

Synopsis:

Human Wild examines what differs us humans from the other animals. The film focuses on subtle everyday situations where our original animal instincts kick in.

Human Wild Thoughts

We, the humans, developed into a species in Africa, on the savannah, for almost 200 000 years ago. Since then, we have lived together with other animals. The wolf, was the first animal we started living together with. We helped each other hunting, sharing the meat afterwards.

While writing this, things have turned wild. The world is locked down due to the coronavirus. Now, we know for sure that we are not separated from the other animals. We are part of the animal kingdom, where viruses go both ways.
It is time for us to step down from our stage and reconsider our relationship with the natural world. To admit that we are just one of many creatures inhabiting the planet.

HUMAN WILD is a homage to the relationship between man and animal, and also an attempt to destroy the line dividing us. In the film, the animals are allowed to just being animals. While the human characters are featured as animalized humans. Popular culture has taught us the opposite, it has drilled us to humanize the animals.

When a pack of dogs are sharing a big junk of meat, they do not jump headfirst over the meat at once. The pack has rules for who can eat first, and who has to wait. There is always a hierarchy within an animal pack, in order to make it work. And the same goes for a group of people.

HUMAN WILD focuses on subtle everyday situations where our original animal instincts kick in. Survival of the nicest, is what matter. Survival of the fittest has been misunderstood: it is not the strongest ones that survive, but the ones that best manage to adapt. The collaborators.

The animals have always helped me into the world of fiction. They are the characters in the stories I tell my children. They were the first subject I learned to draw. But do the animals understand fiction themselves? Is the ability to imagine other realities the key difference between us and the other animals? If so, what kind of reality is then my dog dreaming at night?

Further down the path I wonder, where does the fiction come from? Does it come from everything we do not understand? From the stars? From the animals? From fear? From around the campfire?

Last question: what does the fiction do to us? It can make us prepared. Prepared to survive.
Marthe Thorshaug, 04.13.20

Podcast:

Filmfrelst #420: A talk between filmmaker Marthe Thorshaug and film critic and editor of Montages Karsten Meinich (in Norwegian):

https://montages.no/2020/12/filmfrelst-420-en-samtale-med-filmskaper-marthe-thorshaug-om-human-wild/