ZooScope

Category: Imaginary Animals: No

  • Mighty Joe Young. Dir. Ron Underwood. Buena Vista Pictures. 1998.

    Film provides a platform for racial stereotypes to indoctrinate its viewers and relay social prejudices. Lester and Ross argue that ‘the predominant juxtaposition of images of blacks and social problems- welfare, crime, poverty, drugs, violence…implicitly helps to activate long-existing stereotypes of blacks as sambo and savage’ [1]. The black African poachers in Mighty Joe Young…

  • Water for Elephants. Dir. Francis Lawrence. 20th Century Fox. 2011.

    Water for Elephants (Dir. Francis Lawrence, 2011), based on the novel of the same name, is a story about a young man Jacob (Robert Pattinson) who joins a travelling circus and is unsurprisingly about confinement and freedom. It’s brimming with animals from horses to lions to the star of the show, Rosie the elephant, all of…

  • The Cat From Outer Space. Dir. Norman Tokar. Buena Vista Distribution. 1978.

    As we see a feline descend from the tongue-like walkway of a cat-shaped spaceship, Disney’s 1978 film The Cat From Outer Space opens, invoking a science-fiction both familiar and alien. It is difficult to not subscribe to the film’s endearing nature of a developed animal companionship as a bond forms between human and cat that goes beyond…

  • The Black Stallion. Dir. Carroll Ballard. Twentieth Century Fox. 1979.

    The Black Stallion (1979) Dir. Carroll Ballard Pulled to the tropical shores of a desert island by a wild Arabian horse following a shipwreck, The Black Stallion follows the narrative of an unbreakable bond between boy and horse, man and beast. The only remnants of the shipwreck that remain are the black stallion (The Black), the boy (Alec)…

  • Ring of Bright Water. Dir. Jack Couffer. Cinerama Releasing Corp. 1969.

    “He was boneless, mercurial, sinuous, wonderful… he was an otter in his own element and the most beautiful thing in nature I had ever seen.” [1] The 1960s seems littered with autobiographical accounts of human and animal relations which are, as a result of the popularity of the novel, projected upon the platform of film.…

  • A Cat’s Life (‘Une Vie de Chat’). Dir. Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioli. Gebeka Films. 2010.

    A Cat in Paris (‘Une Vie de Chat’, 2010) is a charmingly funny, aesthetically beautiful and surprisingly thrilling French animated film, directed by Alain Gagnol and Jean-Loup Felicioli. [1] The film tells the story of Dino, a Parisian cat who leads a double life. By day he is a comforting and playful pet to a…

  • Wasp. Dir. Andrea Arnold. None. 2003.

    Andrea Arnold’s realism focuses itself around the lower rungs of the British socioeconomic hierarchy, where the housing estates are run down, children roam the streets instead of the school ground, and poverty seeps into the lives of the protagonists we follow. This is exactly the case in her 2003 short film Wasp, which follows young…

  • Tarzan. Dir. Kevin Lima, Chris Buck. Disney. 1999.

    Tarzan-Two Worlds Tarzan is best characterised by the title of the film’s opening song Two Worlds, sang by Phil Collins. This is the story of flora and fauna, represented by gorillas, colliding with mankind in Disney’s 1999 classic. The film sees an orphaned human baby in Africa adopted into an ape family by a Gorilla mother. The…

  • Sweetgrass. Dir. Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash. Cinema Guild. 2009.

    Spend three years following some Montana shepherds, then five years editing over 200 hours of footage, and you end up with Sweetgrass.1 This documentary film examines the reality of the human-animal relationship between a shepherd and his flock – a relationship in which both parties are completely dependent upon each other. With an unflinching eye and slow…

  • White Fang. Dir. Randal Kleiser. Buena Vista Studios. 1991.

    Baring his teeth to a Grizzly Bear on its hind legs, White Fang- a hybridised wolf-dog, forsakes his life to defend a young boy, Jack Conroy. Jack’s endures a perilous journey across Alaskan terrain to discover his Father’s claim during the 1898 Klondike Gold Rush, and an orphaned wolf-dog puppy whose trust renders him a…