On Thursday the 24th of October, in the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, the screening of this film that delves into the dangerous world of commercial fishing, will take place.
The film, named after a marine beast of the Old Testament that is often associated with Satan and was created by God himself. The term Leviathan has been reused on numerous occasions synonymous with a big monster or creature.
In this production, the creature becomes a mechanical vision, a sensational and atrocious sight of mankind’s earliest endeavours, an amazing visual experience that seems set to leave its mark on cinematic history.
The documentary was filmed in 2012 and produced by France, the United Kingdom and the United States, receiving numerous accolades and awards for its innovative visual approach.
The “Sweetgrass” director manages to authoritatively express the life and the fishing onboard a huge fishing trawler working in the dangerous and rough waters of the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of New England.
The aggressive encounters amongst the crew, the fish, the birds and the machines shown in this documentary, reflect the brutality of a job and an ancestral lifestyle in detail, which in turn is beautiful.
Like Sweetgrass, it manages to successfully throw the spectator from the darkest depths of the ocean, which once inspired Moby Dick, to the view of a bird flying above the boat’s deck.
Many productions exist that have attempted to reflect the life of a fisherman, the complexities of forming part of a crew, the art of fishing, isolation, or the struggle against inclement weather, but never has a film portrayed in such a rude, jagged and crude way, real life on the open seas.
Date: Thursday 24th of October. Time: From 6.30pm. Place: The Mall, London SW1Y 5AH.
For more information please visit the website.
(Translated by Susan Seccombe – Email: ess.translations [@] gmail.com) – Photos: Pixabay