Leviathan

Synopsis

Filmed off the coast of Massachusetts—whaling capital of the world as well as Melville’s inspiration for Moby-Dick—Leviathan follows a hulking groundfish trawler into the surrounding black waters and presents a vivid, almost kaleidoscopic representation of the work, the sea, the machinery and the players, both human and marine. A purely visceral, cinematic experience.

Biography and Films

Véréna Paravel (Switzerland, 1971) and Lucien Castaing-Taylor (Liverpool, 1966) are filmmakers, artists and anthropologists who work at the Sensory Ethnography Lab at Harvard University. Their work features in the permanent collections at the MoMA and the British Museum and has been screened to great acclaim at film festivals worldwide. Their solo films include Paravel's Foreign Parts (2010) and Castaing-Taylor's Sweetgrass (2009). Together they also directed the shorts Nature morte (2013) and Ah Humanity! (2015). After Leviathan (2012), screened at l’Alternativa 2013, they released Somniloquies (2016), Caniba (2017) and De Humani Corporis Fabrica (2022).

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