I have selected a few exemplary scenes of the documentary entitled ‘Het Nieuwe Artis’ (The New Artis) concerning Amsterdam Zoo’s mission.

The documentary by Willemiek Kluijfhout shows some results of the current Amsterdam Zoo Masterplan and new ideas about how to keep zoo animals and present them to the visitors of Amsterdam Zoo. The documentary of 2018 follows the birth of the first ever elephant calf born in Amsterdam and the new modern elephant enclosure. Moreover, it gives transparent insight of how the public relation department discusses the strategy of how to exploit the newborn calf most successfully, as it ‘must’ generate more paying visitors.

In the beginning of the documentary Haig Balian – Amsterdam Zoo director from 2003 until 2017 – wonders if it’s still acceptable to keep animals in captivity nowadays. Although it is obvious that, being the Zoo director, Balian thinks it is acceptable under the right conditions, he is at the same time critical about the knowledge zoo visitors have about nature and animals in the wild. To bring across this knowledge better and the related conservation message it was decided in 2015 that Amsterdam Zoo would keep the names of their animals secret from the public. When animals are given names this triggers the innate human tendency to anthropomorphize the animals which is expected to hamper the Zoo’s effort educating the visitors about nature, wild animals, biodiversity, ecosystems, the threats and the need of conservation to prevent potential extinctions.

(Source: 2Doc – Het Nieuwe Artis, director W.J.A. Kluijfhout)

The full documentary (in Dutch) can be seen at https://www.2doc.nl/documentaires/series/2doc/2018/juli/het-nieuwe-artis.html.