Milik, a film by Mati Klarwein

Giving this 30-minute curio a “film by…” designation is a bit of a stretch but it was co-written by artist Mati Klarwein and also directed by him. Milik was filmed among the towns and desert landscapes of Niger in 1972, and is a rambling thing that’s not easy to comprehend if you’re trying to do so while the all-French voiceover is being haltingly auto-translated. The film was a creation of members of the Deyá art community in Mallorca where Mati Klarwein spent his later years. The scenario is very typical of its time: a youth from Europe travels outside the continent to gain self-knowledge among people with darker skins and “exotic” lifestyles. The endeavour in this case involves a search for a lost cow marked with an aleph—the Hebrew letter which happens to mean “Ox”—with the cow being only the first of a herd of cosmic cattle marked with the remainder of the Hebrew alphabet. Or so we’re told; we only get to see a single animal. The repeated references to marabout angels reinforce…