Viscera
2014 · 4m · United States
Directed by Lauren Morrison
Genres: documentary, essay film, experimental
Tones: contemplative, dark, provocative
A multi-media CalArts MFA thesis film on the disconnects between food and source, rich and poor.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A CalArts thesis hitting the expected beats on class and consumption—smart enough to be taught, but *Viscera* doesn't quite have the teeth to surprise you. The multi-media apparatus feels like it's doing the heavy lifting the ideas can't quite manage on their own.
Morrison's essay film sits thoughtfully in the lineage of Harun Farocki and Martha Colburn, using formal rigor—the interplay of image, text, and sound—to anatomize the obscured geography between table and slaughterhouse. Four minutes of precisely calibrated discomfort that earns its dark meditation.
The decision to let the sound design carry the source material's violence—rather than show it directly—is what transforms what could've been didactic into something genuinely unsettling; Morrison trusts the audience's stomach over the camera's.