Icarus

The film Icarus by artist Giorgio Andreotta Calò (Italy, 1979) was produced after Calò visited the butterfly garden in the former Emmen Zoo and discovered that the place immediately touched him. The butterfly garden was an attraction many Emmen residents loved to visit - its opening, in 1985, even earned Emmen the nickname 'butterfly city'. Since the old zoo moved to a new location and became Wildlands, however, the building has fallen into such disrepair that it had to be demolished in early 2021. Just before that happened, Calò screened Icarus: a film about two entomologists, butterfly experts, who go through a process of birth, blossoming and destruction, all taking place in the abandoned garden, with the myth of Icarus flying to the sun and dying providing an important narrative in the background.