Gueller shoots the industrialized lambing process of a flock of sheep, showing its harsh and grey reality without any embellishments. The cute “wooly balls” who strolled singly in the song are seen in her film as subdued and pressed together creatures. The sheep are marked with plastic bands and herded by man as part of a line of mass production in which nature is regimented and crammed into repressive patterns. Nevertheless, despite the uniform appearance of the sheep and the hustle and bustle of the herding, her camera manages to linger on each ram and ewe separately and show their own nuanced and unique facial expressions thereby restoring their lost individuality.

The harmony of the song is also disrupted by the film’s cinematic language: having divided the film into 16 fragments, Gueller segments the natural flow of the narrative and the soundtrack. The conventional soothing progression of films, especially those dealing with children, is sharply and abruptly interrupted in a strident manner. In this way, Gueller creates an estrangement of the song’s sheep. The sheep counting is no longer pacifying and lulling, but rather awakens the spectator and induces him or her to reconsider our stereotypic notions and images of childhood.

Less Reading...