De Gallo Qui Ovavit – Films

Nina Forsman
Finland | 2024 | 15 min
International Premiere
Languages : Finnish, English, German
Subtitles : English, French

Which came first... the rooster or the egg? It’s a question that has perplexed the human mind since ancient times. On 4th August 1474, an egg-laying rooster was publicly executed on the town square in Basel. Nina Forsman takes this bizarre historical fact and uses it to create an arresting if slightly absurd investigation, drawing on incredible archive footage from British Pathé and Prelinger, among others.

On 4 August 1474, a cockerel was beheaded and burned in the public square in Basel for having committed the "unnatural crime" of laying an egg. History does not say whether the unfortunate bird's defence lawyer remembered Aristotle's lesson: that all creatures’ appearance at birth is subject to change... Nina Forsman seizes on this incongruous trial and questions its presuppositions, drawing on surrealist archives from British Pathé, the Prelinger collection and Finnish television. The narration, at first neutral and factual, becomes that of the convicted rooster, who contemplates with perplexity the peculiar relationship between humans and gallinaceans through the ages. While scientific rationality has failed to settle the ever-nagging question (which came first - perhaps a hermaphrodite...?), it has come up with a barbed solution: break down the egg into atoms, and mass-produce it using machines. De Gallo Qui Ovavit is an invigorating and witty essay, inviting us to blithely jump over the borders of species and genres while thumbing our noses at the arguments of authority.
Emmanuel Chicon

De Gallo Qui Ovavit, 2024
Reflecting Ice, 2019