Live action and animation adaptation of an episode from Lautréamont’s 1868 anti-novel Maldoror.

This film has led a double life: in one version it forms part of an Anglo-German feature film collaboration (see below) based upon the eponymous anti-hero. But here it stands alone, and self contained - the same source of inspiration but a different edit with all new sound.

You Were an Amazement on the Day You Were Born is a visually stunning work that follows a woman through a life characterized by damage and loss, but in which she finds humor, love, and joy. With a score that follows the span of Lenore’s life, from her birth in the early 70s to her death in the 2040s, the film takes us from moments of harrowing loss to those of poignancy and dark humor.

You Were an Amazement on the Day You Were Born is a visually stunning work that follows a woman through a life characterized by damage and loss, but in which she finds humor, love, and joy. With a score that follows the span of Lenore’s life, from her birth in the early 70s to her death in the 2040s, the film takes us from moments of harrowing loss to those of poignancy and dark humor.

Audio-visual recordings of zoo-animals are woven into a fine web of actions and reactions, that finally spiral into a collective animalistic concert. Relating the different animals to each other through montage, fictional relations amongst them is created; a society of animals. The film thus comments on human communities, who created zoos as mirror images. There is an otherness there, and at the same time a disturbing proximity, which we’d like to dismiss.

Written, directed and edited by: Ann Oren 
Sound: Robert Hefter