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Wednesday, May 24, 1995
7:30pm
Ganapati/A Spirit in the Bush and Elephant Games
In the popular imagination, pachyderms are typically reduced to annoying images of domestication-the cheerful tutued dancer, or the pink denizen of insobriety. Skip Blumberg's Elephant Games (28 mins, Color) takes us to Thailand where man and animal have a more compelling relationship: for man, the elephant is an integral part of the economy, for the elephant, man oversees an ever-dwindling habitat. The annual Thai games have their spectacular attractions, the tug-of-war, the speed trials, but Blumberg also lingers on the endangered status of these unwitting contestants. Daniel Reeves counterbalances the innate majesty of elephants with the cruelties waged upon them. In Ganapati/A Spirit in the Bush (45 mins, Color/ B&W) gorgeous location footage is crafted into elegiac, charged portraiture, then intermixed with often disturbing archival passages. Reeves's poetically passionate work looks at the havoc we wreak upon supposedly lesser inhabitants of the animal kingdom. Unfortunately, the elephant is our biggest target.
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