Presented at Lo Schermo dell’Arte Film Festival 2015

Scholar Katrien Vanagt conducts an optics experiment taken from an antique medical treatise, and transforms the kitchen of her house in Brussels into a camera obscura. Her joyful, vigilant children take part. Filmmaker Sarah Vanagt records the phases of this experience in which Katrien, following the book’s instructions, takes the eye of a recently deceased cow, removes the optic nerve’s membrane, and uses it as a lens through which to view objects in the world. The film is a marvelous journey through the forms and colors of nature, which, observed through the lens, appear before our eyes as images from a painting. The medium of the cow’s eye becomes the same instrument provided to spectators, enabling them to see through the camera, narrowing the distance between fiction and reality. 

Sarah Vanagt 
Born in 1976, she produces documentaries, installations, videos and photographs. She has participated in many international festivals, including: FidMarseille, Viennale, IDFA Amsterdam, Les Rencontres Internationales (Paris/Madrid/Berlin) and Hors Pistes at the Centre Pompidou, Paris. Her work is present in many European museums.