Zoo (film)

Zoo
File:Zoo(2007 film) poster.jpg Zoo movie poster
Directed by	Robinson Devor
Produced by	Peggy Case Alexis Ferris
Written by	Charles Mudede Robinson Devor
Starring	Richard Carmen Paul Eenhoorn Russell Hodgkinson John Paulsen
Cinematography	Sean Kirby
Edited by	Joe Shapiro
Distributed by	THINKFilm
Release dates	January 18, 2007 (2007-01-18) Theatrical: April 25, 2007 (2007-04-25)
Running time	80 min.
Country	United States
Language	English

Zoo is a 2007 American documentary film based on the life and death of Kenneth Pinyan, an American man who died of peritonitis due to perforation of the colon after engaging in receptive anal sex with a horse. The film's public debut was at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2007, where it was one of 16 winners out of 856 candidates. Following Sundance, it was selected as one of the top five American films to be presented at the Directors Fortnight sidebar at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.

Title

The movie was originally titled In the Forest There Is Every Kind of Bird, but is released under the title Zoo, short for zoophile, signifying a person with a sexual interest in animals.

Production

The idea for the film began when Jenny Edwards, who as Executive Director of a rescue called Hope for Horses, rescued one of the abused stallions from the Zoo brothel that is the focus of the film, called Mudede to thank him for writing a balanced piece about the incident in the Seattle weekly The Stranger. Originally the film was to be a story about the dead Zoophile, his family and the rescue of the horse who killed him. Much of the film was made with co-operation of Edwards, using her barn and other rescued horses. The veterinarian was Edwards's "rescue" veterinarian she used in her "rescue" operation where both woman capitalize on municipalities' "seized" or "rescued" animals. Dr. Hannah Mueller was known as Hannah Evergreen at the time. During production the film changed due to the involvement of the two men who took Pinyan to the hospital, as well as other friends of his. Filming was almost finished when James Tate agreed to be interviewed. Tate ran the farm in Enumclaw WA and dumped Kenneth Pinyan at the emergency room. His inclusion and interaction with the director derailed the initial concept of the film and resulted in a major re-editing after the Sundance Festival. This edit resulted in removing much of the original Hannah Evergreen (now Mueller) footage though some clips still remain. There was a puzzling interview with one of the minor actors that confused whatever purpose the film originally had. The film became an attempt to explore the life and death of Pinyan, as well as those who came to the farm near Enumclaw for similar reasons, beyond the public understanding of the media. Ultimately it tried to become a positive expose of human-animal sex as a sexual preference. It does contain explicit material of sexual activities, but only in the view of video footage shown on a small television screen.

Crew

Zoo was written by The Stranger columnist Charles Mudede and film director Robinson Devor.

Awards and recognition

Zoo was one of 16 documentaries selected, out of 856 submitted, for screening at the Sundance Film Festival, and played at numerous U.S. regional festivals thereafter.

It was selected as one of the top five American films to be presented at the Directors Fortnight sidebar at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival.

Reception

They called us and were excited about the imagery, the poetry, the experimentation with the documentary form [...] then, strangely, suddenly, in 2005, it becomes the talk of society. [...] How do we go from something being utterly hidden from view, and then suddenly we're consumed with it and so upset by it we need to pass a law?

Charles Mudede

Sundance judges called it a "humanizing look at the life and bizarre death of a seemingly normal Seattle family man who met his untimely end after an unusual encounter with a horse".

The Seattle Times called it "A tough sell that gets respect at Sundance", also noting the local economic effect of landmark films which put a location "on the map". OC Weekly film says, "Zoo achieves the seemingly impossible: It tells the luridly reported tale of a Pacific Northwest engineer for Boeing's fatal sexual encounter with a horse in a way that’s haunting rather than shocking and tender beyond reason." Similar views were expressed by the Los Angeles Times ("remarkably, an elegant, eerily lyrical film has resulted") and the Toronto Star, "gorgeously artful ... one of the most beautifully restrained, formally distinctive and mysterious films of the entire festival".

Other reviewers criticized the film for breaching "the last taboo", or for sinking to new depths: "More compelling than the depths of man's degeneracy is our cultural rationalization of 'art,' whereby pushing the envelope is confused with genius and scuttling the last taboo is seen as an expression of sophistication."

External links

• Zoo at IMDb
• Zoo at AllMovie
• "Bestiality flick shocks Cannes." at the Wayback Machine (archived July 25, 2008) News24. May 22, 2007
• Lim, Dennis. "A Lyrical Approach to a Subject That Shocks." The New York Times. April 1, 2007.