Still: No Horses on Mars - Bea de Visser

Bea de Visser’s beautiful and vibrant short film No Horses on Mars* takes recent ethological, biological and ophthalmic research into horses, and imagines what it is that the animal perceives - and how this differs from (or indeed resembles) human perception. 

The film is the second part of a trilogy, following on from The Animal That Therefore I Am, in which the ‘animal gaze’ is assessed as seriously as the ‘human’ gaze, which itself derives from our species’ intrinsic tendency towards anthropocentricity, in other words a belief that we are top dog, as it were. 

In No Horses On Mars director de Visser undertakes a scientific study of the horse, applying CT brain scans, filming the animal via motion capture or thermal imaging, observing it underwater or in glossy muscular flight as it vaults over a kitchen table in a mock-up studio. She further explains how the horse’s brain has two distinct halves which are not as closely connected as the human brain. An object seen by the horse’s right eye will not necessarily be seen by the left eye on a return journey. 

The film also undertakes a poetic analysis to determine what the beast may be experiencing in a world primarily shaped and designed by humans. “When a horse was a horse, I didn't know I was a horse. Everything was sulking, brooding and all that,” goes the lyrical narration, which de Visser admits is a ‘huge nod’ to Austrian writer Peter Handke. But then there is a temporal shift, as the poem poses the equine question: “Why am I me and why not you? Why am I here and why not there?” (To some extent, de Visser regrets the use of verbal narration as it risks anthropomorphising her subject, but felt it was justified as “it also helps the audience out a little bit.”)

The horse’s POV is presented via a fish eye lens as it gallops in a field, chomps on grasses or views the motorway ahead (or behind) from inside a horse-box.

De Visser concedes that her films “are not for the Pathé audience,” and that she has the international arthouse festival circuit very much in mind when making them, although she is not averse to their exhibition in museums and galleries.

“You really need to see it in the theatre with the DCP and with great sound. Horses have ears that can move separately and they really hear a lot of things from the front and the back. I played a lot with that, so I can imagine the film also in a gallery that has a separate speaker route.”

The director further stresses how she is a genuine lover of all animals. “When you look into their eyes, you know that there is something alive there, and something that is really watching the world as a place in which to live, and that's a miracle that I want to share.” Which is why she undertook her trilogy of animal films, each with its own unique line of study. 

“In The Animal That Therefore I Am I saw the ‘animal gaze’ as a kind of emancipation against the primal position of humans. No Horses on Mars is more about what an animal experiences in the living environment imposed by humans, in this case a horse that has co-evolved with the human species,” de Visser underlines.

And the third part? “It’s about animal language. I'm studying the elephant,” the director reveals. “The elephant is an animal that tells a lot in sounds we can't even hear. They tell a lot with their feet stamping on the ground, and they can listen to each other from miles away and even give each other names by the sounds they make individually.”

This third element is currently in pre-production, but de Visser is happy to take her time as she contemplates its eventual shape and form. “My intention is not to make a lot of films. My intention is to make a few good films, which hopefully I will be remembered by,” she signs off.

The film is part of the International Competition at the festival.

Find more information on International Short Film Festival Oberhausen here.

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*Film is supported by the Netherlands Film Fund