— BY Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Verena Paravel
Leviathan is a feature-length film about men at sea and fish on boats. It offers an appreciation for the sensory experience, labor, and political and ecological stakes of one of the oldest endeavors that has been an important part of human history since the Paleolithic. Shot off the coast of the mythic city of Moby Dick, with eleven cameras swapping hands between the filmmakers and fishermen, in an effort to create a form of collective experimentation that gives free reign to the perspectives of both fishermen and their catch, the film seeks to capture the many ways in which human, animal, and machine; beauty and horror; and life and death all merge in uncanny ways in the world of contemporary commercial fishing.
In the very waters where Melville’s Pequod gave chase to Moby Dick, leviathan captures the collaborative clash of man, nature, and machine. Shot on a dozen cameras – tossed and tethered, passed from fisherman to filmmaker – it is a cosmic portrait of one of mankind’s oldest endeavors.
Leviathan is a Cinereach grantee.
