In Naya – The Forest Has a Thousand Eyes, a she-wolf walks from Germany to Belgium, monitored through GPS. The first wolf in Belgium in a century, she makes headlines; then suddenly vanishes from the human gaze.
Building upon academic research, Sebastian Mulder’s documentary reconstructs a monitored she-wolf’s passage through Western Europe through public surveillance footage to reveal how tracking devices employed in the study of animal behaviour and habitat protection can be used to endanger them. Using video recordings from urban settings and forests located all over the world and foregrounding them as local through archival audio reports of the she-wolf’s reception by the Belgian community, this voyeuristic collage provides ample commentary on what the ubicuity of recording devices means for humans and wild animals alike. With thousands of eyes pointed at itself, the world depicted in Naya embodies the anthropocene’s most inescapable feature: the disappearance of privacy. (Georgiana Vrăjitoru)
Sebastian Mulder explores the relationships between humans and other nature, and the influence of technology on these relationships. In his experimental and poetic documentaries, he questions our world’s future. His graduation film for his audiovisual media degree at the University of Arts in Utrecht, Nature: All Rights Reserved (2016), was screened at Palm Springs International Film Festival, Interfilm Berlin, Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival and awarded Best European Student film at Go Short – International Short Film Festival Nijmegen.
LENGTH: 24 min.
YEAR: 2021
COUNTRY OF PRODUCTION: The Netherlands
DIRECTOR: Sebastian Mulder
EDITOR: Nina Graafland
SOUND DESIGN: Jacob Oostra
MUSIC: Eren Önsoy
MOTION GRAPHICS: Amos Mulder
PRODUCTION: [boondocs] – Jasper Boon
DISTRIBUTION:
Square Eyes – Wouter Jansen
https://squareeyesfilm.com/