The storyteller wanders in the forest and encounters sculpture like foam animals that archers have used for target practice. The encounter evolves into a collage journey to the mutual history of humanity and animality, embracing issues about animal representation, where mental asylums – public attractions in an early stage – equate with zoos and American industrial slaughterhouses, which were common tourist attractions until the 1950s.
Ellipsis is a meandrous story where the monologist encounters sculpture like foam animals and a large fond stretched between a bunch of trees in a forest that archers use for target practice. The fond evokes the vision of a forestal movie screen or a theather stage with sculpture animals, making the mute and mysterious plastic animals that play the role of archery targets come alive. They become a part of history, which through the famous Disney movie ”Bambi” leads to moot sports hunting and the tradition of human and animal representation.
The narrator’s story moves on to explore the historical relationship between zoos and mental asylums, which unexpectedly converges in several areas: as circuses with their ”freaks” and trained animals, the portrayal of indigenous peoples as exotic curiosities, eugenics, mass production of animals and industrial slaughter for human nutrition, tourism, racism….
The collage like essay film combines text and visual material in an original way and was mainly filmed in a forest in eastern Helsinki, but also at the Rabat Zoo in Morocco, at the collections of Kunstkamera in St Petersburg and, as it happened, in a remote graveyard in Astoria, OR, U.S. Furthermore, the piece consists of old stereoscopic footage.
The premiere of the film was supposed to have taken place at Galleria Huuto IV 29.5.-21.6.2020 but was postponed to May 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic .
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