Leviathan

A horror documentary with sea legs, this film gives us a graphic sense of life and death on and around an American fishing vessel on the North Atlantic. The rough poetic images were filmed with small, nimble cameras, sometimes mounted on the crew members, sometimes tossed back and forth between the dead fish in trays of water, then floating like drowned men in the ocean. The film is devoid of music, interviews or commentary; the soundtrack is mixed from growling motors, crashing waves, rattling chains, the screech of hydraulic winches and orders being barked through the intercom. Mostly shot at night, allows us to see and feel how the ship ploughs a furrow, monster-like, through the towering waves. The film is dedicated to the fearless sea monster from the Old Testament and comes from Harvard University's Sensory Ethnography Lab, set up in 2006 and the source of several innovative documentaries that reopen the discussion on the possibilities of the film medium: (2009), (2010) and (2012). Alongside the crew of the ship, the gothic-style credits also list many missing ships, species of fish, the sea and the moon.