Filmed in China, France and Italy, Naturales Historiae presents different stories about nature and asks how we view and imagine it ourselves. Each chapter explores a situation in which people wrestle with (images of) nature. Human obsessions are exposed and many presumed certainties are suddenly shaken at their foundations. This film defends the idea that people can lend a certain stability to a/their unpolished, changing world by dividing that world up according to their own patterns of thought. Julier emphasises that we ourselves invent the concepts of organising the world’s diversity. In this way we risk divorcing the world of its essence and its raw vitality by ‘freezing’ it in a catalogue of images, landscapes, definitions and (scientific, religious ...) resolutions.

This kaleidoscopic film essay is also a personal endeavour. It creates an overview of the stories, clues and collected objects in order to create a personal encyclopaedia that is contemporary and visual.

Part of NORMAL SCHNORMAL, a multidisciplinary programme on normality and other deviations.