‘Progress vs Sunsets: Reformulating the Nature Documentary’: Probing into the Impact of Animal Videos

Progress vs Sunsets: Reformulating the Nature Documentary by Melanie Bonajo is the culmination of ten years of research spent collecting animal videos from the internet. They compared the aesthetics of these internet animal videos with those presented in traditional animal documentaries and created a series of philosophical questions. Most of these questions revolve around how both people’s perception and the lives of these animals have changed. As traditional documentaries tend to showcase animals in their natural habitats, many internet videos show them in urban spaces or interacting with human beings.

To make Progress vs Sunsets: Reformulating the Nature Documentary, Bonajo filmed a handful of children, showing them the animal videos while asking questions she had constructed from ten years spent collecting and watching these videos. For Bonajo, this exercise allowed her to uncover raw and unfiltered truths about humanity’s relationship with wildlife today. The truths they shared also include some uncomfortable ones, such as animal abuse for the sake of content and the propagation of illicit wildlife trade that was being marketed through said 'cute' online videos.

Progress vs Sunsets: Reformulating the Nature Documentary is an hour long art documentary with plenty of special effects, playful colours and animation to engage people in difficult conversations with childlike enthusiasm. The message is loud and clear: Bonajo hopes that the piece will help today’s adults and children understand that they hold the opportunity to create a better life for the animals they see on the internet. This is why Progress vs Sunsets: Reformulating the Nature Documentary by Melanie Bonajo is relevant to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals of Responsible Consumption and Production, Life on Land, and Life Below Water.

Bonajo’s philosophical prompts also pushed the children to reflect on how animals interact with current human technology. “I wouldn’t like it if animals had iPhones or iPads or toys, they would look too much like human beings,” ponders a child as a video of a chimpanzee wearing VR headgear plays in the background. “I know a lot of animals are filmed, but they also need their privacy,” says another child, which was followed by yet another child who lamented how annoying it must be for an animal to have a human being follow them with a camera.

Thus, Melanie Bonajo's Progress vs Sunsets: Reformulating the Nature Documentary delves into the effects of internet animal videos on the animals themselves and human perceptions of wildlife. Through a decade-long research journey, Bonajo juxtaposes the aesthetics of internet videos with traditional nature documentaries, uncovering complex issues such as animal exploitation for content and the spread of illicit wildlife trade. By engaging children in discussions about these videos, Bonajo brings forth unfiltered insights into our evolving relationship with animals.

Find out more about Progress vs Sunsets: Reformulating the Nature Documentary by Melanie Bonajo by checking their Instagram on @melanie_bonajo.