
Facing Animals
Program: Birders: The Central Park Effect
Photographer and first-time filmmaker Jan van IJken explores the often bizarre relationship between man and domesticated animals by asking why we find it easy to look away from the millions of animals suffering on industrial farms while we pamper and anthropomorphize others… "In Facing Animals I give the hidden animals in the industrial farms a face. I invite the viewer to think about the value of an animal. The film isn’t a pamphlet against intensive farming, but a visual essay about the complex, intriguing and sometimes confusing relationship between man and animal."—van IJken