The Pure Necessity + All Voices Are Mine

Dir. David Claerbout. Belgium. 2016, 50 mins. Beguiling and beautiful, artists David Claerbout’s The Pure Necessity is the result of a simple premise whose execution required painstaking labor. Claerbout and his team redrew frames for the 1967 Disney animated feature The Jungle Book, removing the narrative, dialogue, and anthropomorphized animals. Instead, he focuses on the wildlife, and on natural sounds. The film playfully reminds us of the gulf between the real world and the fantasy world of movies, and it also draws our attention to the physical beauty that normally exists as background.