Part One: Quite often loss can be measured by concern. And so it is with Man's relationship to the animal kingdom. As the "lower orders" become increasingly endangered with the remaining "examples" relegated to zoos and preserves, a very human feeling of curiosity and loss, sometimes nostalgic, seems to rise up in response. Daniel Reeves's majestic Ganapati: A Spirit in the Bush places the blame for the animal kingdom's threatened demise on Man's abusive conduct. To illustrate this claim, he assembled a remarkable portrait of the elephant-tamed and terrorized-that is, at once, poetic, sensual and accusatory. Leaving the wilds behind, but not the lyricism, Ante Bozanich's Pale of Night looks at denizens of the urbanscape. A dog, chirping birds, cats and domesticated rats are the cast in what is actually a fanciful morality play. Cruelty to animals, suggests Bozanich, subtly discloses Man's propensity for warfare, the most spectacular of bestial behaviors. Rendering the camel with minimal flourishes, Nancy Graves's Isy Boukir resists anthropomorphisizing its subject. These almost primordial beings gain stature as singular survivors of a barren, but beautiful wilderness. However, Graves's film forwards the sense that the realm of the camel excludes Man in favor of the ineffable. Part Two: Another measure of loss can be seen in the iconic distance between Man and beast. As if to narrow the gap separating homo sapiens from Animalia, studies of species are advanced, along with campaigns for the failing fauna, all the while establishing a sophisticated form of pseudo-intimacy. Anthropologist Ray L. Birdwhistell, a major proponent of Kinesics, the study of "body language," visited zoos in London, Paris, Rome, San Francisco, Tokyo, Philadelphia, New Delhi and Hong Kong, to observe the interaction of human and beast. Microcultural Incidents in Ten Zoos captures the "gaze" of individuals and families with elephants providing the object of desire. What we see ranges from looks of disregard objectifying the elephants as photo backdrops to looks of recognition individualizing the sentient animals beyond the enclosure. Cane Toads: An Unnatural History, by Mark Lewis, takes the somewhat disastrous introduction of a foreign amphibian into Australia's Queensland and registers its humorous impact on the nearby human population. A quizzical construct, this documentary mocks the delivery of scientific research by continually investing the bloated toads with human attributes. A wide cross-section of people, from drug abusers to local dignitaries, attest to their admiration (and disdain) for these damp creatures. Cane Toads takes no particular side; the toads are a nuisance, but so, too, are the people. Ganapati: A Spirit in the Bush by Daniel Reeves. (1986, 45 mins, Color, 3/4" video, Cassette from Electronic Arts Intermix) Pale of Night by Ante Bozanich. (1986, 7 mins, 3/4" video, Cassette from Electronic Arts Intermix) Isy Boukir by Nancy Graves. Photographed by David Anderson. Edited by Linda Leeds. (1971, 16 mins, Color, 16mm, Print from Film-makers' Cooperative) Microcultural Incidents in Ten Zoos by Ray L. Birdwhistell & Jacques D. Van Vlack. (1971, 35 mins, Color, 16mm, Print from American Federation of Arts) Cane Toads: An Unnatural History by Mark Lewis. (1987, 46 mins, Color, 16mm, Print from Film Australia) Total running time: 149 mins.