Her Name Was Europa (2020) dir. Anja Dornieden & Juan David Gonzalez Monroy

“No doubt it is an unusual idea to resurrect a dead animal”. The quote is from Lutz Heck, a German zoologist, author, and friend of Göring, who dreamed of resurrecting the aurochs, an ancestor of modern cattle. Shot on shimmering black-and-white celluloid, this droll, endearingly handmade essay explores attempts past and present to bring this extinct beast back to life: is science just another ideology? Like the two sets of film stock used to shoot the same procedure, the different covers of Heck’s book or the vast rainforest housed in a hangar: a copy can impress, deceive or seduce, but the original is something else entirely. (James Lattimer for Documenta Madrid)