Wild Boy

Guy Ben-Ner, "Wild Boy", 2004.
Guy Ben-Ner, "Wild Boy", 2004.

Wild Boy  is the story of the education of Amir, the artist's son. Ben-Ner plays the educator's part, trying to domesticate the child. Using the metaphor of the wild child is Ben-Ner's homage to this recurring theme in literature and cinema: from Edgar Rice Burroughs' « Tarzan » to Truffaut's « L'enfant sauvage », and Rudyard Kipling's « Jungle book ». The video is an attempt at capturing this decisive moment when the child lets go of its wilderness to become « civilized », and raises the nature/culture dichotomy, dear to the Enlightenment philosophers.