human/animal

The performance film, human/animal shows actors deep in trance-like transformations between human and animal states, guided by instincts and behaviours which are uncanny, unexpected and sometimes unsettling.

This collaborative ensemble was a week-long exploratory improvisation by artist filmmaker Pete Gomes, actors Gareth Watkins, Charles Sobrey, Timothy Dodd, Bartel Jespers and movement coach Gabrielle Moleta. The film highlights and showcases Moleta’s techniques of Transformation and Imaginative Improvisation, through the camera, in this intense psychological and physical immersion by the four highly trained actors.

Gomes’ improvisational filmmaking technique articulates an intensity and distinct performer-camera dynamic, revealing the raw, spontaneous and visceral physical energies on display during extended improvisations. This hypnotic performance film reveals something of what it is to become our animalhuman selves and provokes questions about our relation to the world.

Filmed at London Performance Studios human/animal was developed as part of the performance award Seeding Space and had its premiere in October 2024 at Bloomsbury Festival 2024Human.kind. You can listen to podcast interview with film director Pete Gomes talking to Bloomsbury festival about how we made the film.

The actors,not new to this process nor to one another worked intensively over a week in autumn 2022 thanks to a performance award from London Performance Studios. The actors Timothy Dodd,(also a founding member of Company Gabrielle Moleta), Gareth Watkins, Charles Sobry and Bartel Jespers, spent the week observing and working in tiger. The actors were coached by Gabrielle through the week and Pete Gomes recorded durational improvised performance with live sound loops and lighting. Pivotal for this project was Pete’s own improvisational film making model, called a ‘Unit’, in the ensemble. Developed from research this model explores dynamic camera-performer relations, where the operation of camera is improvisational, working within the unit, alongside performers as an active and responsive player.

Photos: Pete Gomes