Now 60% OFF The Online Yoga Teacher Training

7 Selected Films about the human-animal relationship

Human-animal relationship films are selected, most of which focus on the human-dog/wolf relationship.


Some belong to the 'Prehistoric' category and/or the 'Survival' category.
I was recently reading about the ancient Inca tribe that man made evolutionary progress thanks to his clever intervention to domesticate animals. If this had not happened, the scene would have taken a different turn, especially at a time when hunting was scarce and conditions were not conducive to survival.

I choose these films to remind us again where we have lead as a society. Especially the prehistoric movies show that the reasons we domesticated the dog thousands of years ago no longer exist, because we take them under our protection unconsciously or that if this goal still exist (in conscious cases) e.g. hunting, protection, companionship, we don't treat them too much good for their health (e.g. yes, they take care of them, but we leave them alone and chained up, yes, they are friends for the house, but we leave them on the balcony to live a few meters apart or we don't talk to them for 23 hours a day, while they just sit and wait for us).

The same category of films shows that the scene has indeed changed completely (instead of hunting once in a while, we fill our stomachs every three or so, after we go out to fill our bags of packed food from the market and at home we open the fridge all the time and for psychological reasons and because our digestive system rythm is out of control), but the competition and the struggle for survival remain in other expressions. Also, that some things that today we reject as selfish (with the well-known 'our children don't belong to us'), are probably in our nature, e.g. the need of the herd to show honorable members or, conversely, the need of the family to prove that they have a worthy member. Early on in history, the archetypes of people appear, e.g. the thinker-alternative-pacifist, the spiritualist-shaman, the leader, the practical/doer, the nurturer-housekeeper, etc... What  troubled me is whether the need for man to live with their family and their pack can be rejected by the comfort of the super technological age, but at the same time this isolation from our own people is healthy...

An anthropological/sociological phenomenon is that where people used to live with their families all together for centuries in the same house (grandparents-parents-children) now they want everyone to live alone in their own house (with the phenomenon of 'parents abandoned in institutions', etc.).

Is loneliness being fought or has the overconvenience of the technological age overtaken mental health and are we struggling to fight it alone? Ad finally, does isolation make us more selfish, more irresponsible to others, and less capable of love?

Alpha (2018)
 
 
Wolf Totem / Le dernier loup (2015)
The Jungle Book (2016)
 
 
 
Ένας αληθινός φίλος / A Dog's Journey (2019)


Ο καλύτερος φίλος μου / A dog's purpose (2017)


I Am Legend (2007)


25η ώρα / 25th Hour (2002)