The Ghosts in Our Machine

The Ghosts in Our Machine (2013)

Through the heart and photographic lens of international photographer Jo-Anne McArthur, 
we become intimately familiar with a cast of non-human animals. The film follows Jo-Anne over the course of a year as she photographs several animal stories in parts of Canada, 
the U.S. and in Europe. Each story is a window into global animal industries: 
Food, Fashion, Entertainment and Research.

Date of release
2013-04-28
TMDB
7.0 / 10 (10)
Runtime
1h 33m
Genres
Documentary
Director
Liz Marshall

Casting

Interesting facts

The Ghosts in Our Machine is a 2013 Canadian documentary film by Liz Marshall. The film follows the photojournalist and animal rights activist Jo-Anne McArthur as she photographs animals on fur farms and at Farm Sanctuary, among other places, and seeks to publish her work. The film as a whole is a plea for animal rights.

Development and production

Filmmaker Liz Marshall was prompted to create The Ghosts in Our Machine "to give a voice to the non-human world". Her previous films, including Water on the Table, about the right to water and the struggle to protect it from the free market, had been "human-centric", focused on human rights and environmental themes, and she intended to also "turn [her] gaze and commitment to the plight of animals used for human profit: the billions of ghosts used…

Mirroring McArthur's photographic approach, Marshall intended to make the film about "individual animals used for human profit and consumption". Online, the project would tell the "ghost stories" of individual animals, and the film would tell the stories of individual animals within the four main animal industries.

Long before the release of the film, Marshall began a cross-media campaign, allowing the documentary to "unfold over time in stages". The initial online launch date, including a trailer, website and social media presence, was April 2011. This online presence partially served to create a viewership base prior to the film's release, with Marshall hoping to attract a broad spectrum of animal advocates.

Marshall explained that The Ghosts in Our Machine is "a film, a documentary website, a Vimeo channel, an active community-building Facebook page [and so on.] Its sole purpose is to be part of the movement to expand consciousness to help end the suffering of so many animals." An Indiegogo campaign was launched to help fund the project in reaching the next stage of its development, but this next stage was not solely the film.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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