Becoming-Animal: Non-human Perceptual Forms and Dispositifs in Contemporary Ibero-American Cinema

Abstract

This article addresses the concept of becoming-animal, proposed by Deleuze and Guattari, as a «zone of indiscernibility» where the human and the animal mutually modify each other, in order to analyze from this prism the cinematographic strategies of contemporary films of Ibero-American cinema, such as: Salvaxe, salvaxe (Emilio Fonseca, 2024), Reserve (Gerard Ortin, 2020), 592 metroz goiti (Maddi Barber, 2019), Ruido ê (Silvia Zayas, 2023), Cemetery (Carlos Casas, 2019), Pepe (Nelson Carlo de los Santos Arias, 2024) and Monólogo colectivo (Jessica Sarah Rinland, 2024). The research is organized around three axes: 1) Capture technologies and visual regimes of the non-human, 2) Perspectives and overflows of the animal camera and 3): Anthropomorphization and zoomorphic realism. Through an iconographic analysis of the works, the article finds that new forms of interspecies perception are generated, allowing other -non-human- sensibilities to emerge and inhabit the imagery of these films.