Beresheet

A documentary-style inspired triptych, 3 intertwined stories about 3 different animals. 16 th century European scientist spirals after seeing a legless bird corpse brought from New Zealand. He ventures on a completely static journey through the knowledge available to him, coming out with incredible stories about the birds being visitors from outer worlds and finding sense in abstract mediaeval religious imagery. He’s unaware that Papuans remove the birds’ legs before selling them to travellers. 2021 Hong Kong. One of the new identified sources of the spread of the disease are imported hamsters. Everyone in the country is asked to give away their pets to be tested and disposed of. A man who is too afraid to be discovered with a positive-testing creature decides to throw away his pet into a public trash bin. The wild colony of hamsters outlives the humans. The future - a small ship called Beresheet crashes on the moon and spreads tardigrades that become first colonisers from Earth.

Director’s statement
This film is a non direct continuation of the research I have done for my final dissertation on my Masters degree at RCA titled "What is the evolutionary basis of stories? A dissertation story on how storytelling allows us to make sense out of reality based on three examples of misrepresentations of animals". I am fascinated by the strive of humans to understand and categorise everything around them and at the same time validate their importance in the world. The world on the other hand is not too concerned about their wild attempts. I find immense beauty in the human misunderstandings of the world and hauntingly revealing about how our minds work. Beresheet, which is the name of the lunar probe that in 2019 crashed on the moon spreading thousands of tardigrades, means in Hebrew “In the beginning”. This film in its absurdity is my commentary about the fundamentals of perceiving the world.