Cows and Queens

Portugal, 2018, 38’
Director and Scriptwriter: Laura Marques
Cinematographer: Laura Marques
Producer: Laura Marques
Sound: Laura Marques, Giorgio Gristina
Editor: Laura Marques

The Herens cattle is a race of cows essentially bred for tournaments. In these tournaments and among the herd, the most powerful cow is “The Queen”. Spending four months working alone as a cow herder in the Swiss Alps, Laura is given the following advice by the previous herder: she must be the Queen. The advice is taken literally, in an absurd pursuit for the title. Reflecting on power relations between humans and other animals, the film puts the unidirectionality of this relationship to question. If cows are not just bodies to be controlled by humans, what else can they be?

Awards
Opening Scenes – Meta Cultural Foundation Prize, Slon Residency, Visions du Réel, Nyon, Switzerland, 2018;
INATEL Foundation Award for Best Film/ Honorable Mention of the Jury of the Portuguese Competition, DocLisboa, Portugal, 2018.

Laura Marques

Born in 1988 in Leiria, Portugal, Marques holds a BA in Equipment Design done between FBAUL in Lisbon and KHIB in Bergen. In 2017, she finished an MA in Anthropology – Visual Cultures at FCSH in Lisbon with a semester at the Culture Studies department at the Humboldt University in Berlin. Since 2012, takes care of Eringer cows in the Swiss Alps in summertime, developing several media art projects in the rest of the year. Cows and Queens is her first short documentary.

Filmography
Cows and Queens (2018)