Guy Ben Ner | Elia - The Story of an Ostrich, video 20:9 min., 2003
Curator: Dalia Levin
July 5, 2003 - Oct. 18, 2003
The video follows an ostrich family migrating to a new habitat, like a custom-made imitation of a BBC nature program (for example). It tells a melodramatic, sensitive story about the ostrich chick, the firstborn, who is jealous of her newly born chick brother, and about the delicate emotional relationships within the family that become turbulent as a result.
To be more accurate: we are concerned with a very specific type of nature documentary (the one usually preserved for human apes) that focuses on a single family unit. It strives to elicit empathy toward the animal by naming the family members and constructing the film as a family melodrama with all that implies (such as the classical films about Jane Goodall’s chimps).
