'Jungle Beat: The Movie' (2021)
This animated kids' movie shows viewers two different species--jungle animals and aliens--and how both species coexist.

A loudspeaker broadcasts an irreversible announcement: Judgment Day has been brought forward. No one responds. No one seems to be listening. Authority has been emptied of pathos, the voice has become a function, liturgy has been transformed into procedure. Shot on expired black-and-white Super 8 film, with an old digital color video camera and archival sound material, the film traverses a fragmented and opaque reality, where the substance of the image is consumed along with the world it is supposed to represent. The film presents itself as a damaged liturgical object, a magnetic relic that still transmits, but from an elsewhere already emptied of grace. A fragment of the end, caught in the act of its stalemate.
This animated kids' movie shows viewers two different species--jungle animals and aliens--and how both species coexist.
“And I think to myself….what a wonderful world”. Louis Armstrong sang about this notion via his classic 1967 song, an ode to witnessing elements of our life that should be but some reminders of exactly what that concluding line of each verse indicates. Now we see our contemporary realities and, just being honest, it makes a sentiment like this seem SO overtly far away….perhaps even impossible….to accept or believe could be. It sounds harsh, but again, so much of what is occurring speaks not to beauty, but bedlam.
It was always people for Joe, and he ultimately found them at the end of a long, painful, yet illuminating quest for self-discovery outside of one, confident constant - his bisexuality.
A summary of the films featured in this annual event taking place in Westchester.