Zoological Surrealism: The Nonhuman Cinema of Jean Painlevé by James Leo Cahill (review)

One of the reasons to study the past has always been that it casts our connection to the present in relief. At its best, a careful examination of history offers a chance to rethink—not only the past and the present—but also what we thought we knew about our relationship to the world more generally. James Leo Cahill’s study of Jean Painlevé’s films in Zoological Surrealism: The Nonhuman Cinema of Jean Painlevé enacts this shifting of perspective by delivering new insights on Painlevé’s cinematic vision of the vital natural world that exists alongside our human one. In our present age of climate collapse, Cahill’s book presents Painlevé’s project as an unexpected and welcome model of how we might approach our tenure on this planet otherwise.