Oscar Contender ‘Perfectly A Strangeness’ Imagines Donkey Perspective

One of the most cinematic documentaries of the year was shot in short film format, without dialogue.

Alison McAlpineOscar contender completely weirdwinner of more than a dozen awards at film festivals around the world, runs an extra 15 minutes.

“I wanted to tell a story without any dialogue,” McAlpine tells Deadline, “and play with what I think are the basic elements of cinema—shadow, light, sound, reflections.”

The plot follows three horse companions – Palomo, Ruperto and Pale – as they walk through mountainous terrain towards an unexpected object.

“Three donkeys find themselves in a nameless desert,” the director explains, “and discover an abandoned astronomical observatory and a universe.”

The idea for the short film grew out of an earlier long-form project that McAlpine directed. “I was filming a feature film in the same area… You would go to these incredible observatories at 3,000 meters. [elevation] and above, and you often saw a lot of donkeys, like a dozen donkeys. Some of them were wild, I think, and some were domestic, I think it came together. But apparently these plains are in the Atacama Desert [of northern Chile] you may find, I don’t know what you call “herds” of donkeys.”

The documentary invites viewers to imagine this landscape from a non-human perspective.

“Seeing these donkeys and these metal domes grazing next to these billion-dollar animals, I just asked the question, how do they see this world?” McAlpine says. “And then, of course, there was [the question]How can we replicate this if I use this donkey angle? Using anamorphic lenses we illuminate the donkey's eyes. [The eyes] were exciting because some of them actually have galaxies inside, although they appear dark to our eyes. So it was an exploration of this universe. But really, it is as if a child, or in this case a donkey, is discovering the universe for the first time—a universe that is the tactile environment of this apparently abandoned observatory, devoid of people, and, of course, the universe of the night sky.”

The film also periodically switches to another, non-human perspective – on the giant observatories themselves, while donkeys clatter, clack, clack around them. Sometimes the director takes us inside the buildings.

“All the interior footage was filmed at the Paranal Observatory, which is located north of the La Silla Observatory, which looks more abandoned, and this [Paranal] “This is a much more modern observatory,” says McAlpine. “I wanted to experience the inner workings of this observatory… These instruments had never been filmed before, so it was a great honor.”

Ben Grossman composed the ethereal score. “He's a hurdy-gurdy player, well-known all over the world, and he's an improviser. And I really wanted a sound that felt improvisational,” says McAlpine. “In Ben's case, it was a barrel organ, a tuba, and these bells – I call them bells, but they're actually metal parts that he has that some craftsman made for him. I wanted something that people didn't recognize as regular violins in a film score, or something that was unrecognizable… I wanted the soundscape to feel open and sort of neutral, that it just felt like we didn't hear it earlier.”

Totally weird It premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May. It won Best Documentary Short at the Chicago International Film Festival and the North Carolina Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, Best Canadian Short at the Planet in Focus festival in Toronto, and Best Short at Les Rendez-vous du cinéma Québécois in Montreal, among many other prizes. It was named one of Canada's top ten short films at the Toronto International Film Festival.

“I’m honored and humbled to receive truly enthusiastic support from some of the audience,” shares McAlpine. “They're conveyed in a way that's never been done before, which is a huge compliment. And they're open to this hybrid between documentary and feature film, which it really is. I wrote the treatment [for it] in four parts, and not that I'm a composer, but I had a very simple story that I wanted to tell, [and] very much like the jazz music I wanted, donkeys coming from the plains up the hill, exploring the observatory, and then the observatory comes to life.”

McAlpine was a poet before she became a director. Her tongue in completely weird is visual.

“For me, this film or fairy tale is a true cinematic poem,” she says. “It gives the audience space to imagine, space to breathe and imagine.”