Reflection

Humans’ disconnection from nature is a very important topic for me. As someone who grew up in a very urban area with very little experience with anywhere outdoors without a freeway, I’ve found myself to be generally separated from more natural environments. Despite this, I’ve always had a fascination with how humans live and survive in nature; foraging for food, traveling various landscapes, even being part of the food chain– all of these are things that I’ve been interested in since I was small. So when looking at the sub-themes and seeing the description for “Generational Knowledge”, I was instantly drawn to it. I wanted to encompass indigenous American beliefs of humans being part of nature and the ecosystem into something more metaphorical. I left the human faces just so that the animals could gently test, but not quite sever the thought of humans being somewhat separate from other organisms. The idea of “returning to nature” is probably a little bit scary for most people– I thought instead of outright denying that it’s scary at all, I could accept that slight bit of disturbingness back into the film while also portraying it as peaceful. I chose animation as my medium because I wanted to tell a more surreal story. I wanted to depict the movement and progression from human to animal in a way that shows them as the same, while also conveying the violence of removing them, without making them muddled and difficult for the viewer to differentiate. I think animation was the best way to convey what I was trying to say, while being able to have a balance of words and imagery that might stick with a watcher more concretely.