RABBITS’ EYES VIEW, INVOLVING RABBITS: A DIFFERENT KIND OF BERLIN WALL DOCUMENTARY

This article focuses on Bartosz Konopka’s documentary, Królik po berlinsku (Rabbit á la Berlin, 2009), which tells the story of the Berlin Wall in an unconventional way, that is, from a rabbit’s perspective. By playing ironically with the conventions of historical and wildlife documentaries, by reframing and reprocessing archival footage according to a rabbit’s point of view, and by creating transitions that prioritize a rabbit’s gaze and movements, Rabbit á la Berlin opens up a unique opportunity for a discussion of the conventional anthropocentrism of the documentary genre and the cinematic realm itself. In this regard, the article examines the distinctive generic, narrative, and formal arrangements of Rabbit á la Berlin, which develop possibilities and capabilities beyond anthropocentrism. It lays out a discussion of the regimes of visibility that apply to animals and animal representations in cinema and contributes to the evolution of film studies into a vaster field, unconfined to a single species