THE MODERN JUNGLE

Synopsis

The Modern Jungle is a portrait of globalization filtered through the fever dream of a Mexican shaman, don Juan, who falls under the spell of a pyramid-scheme-marketed nutritional supplement. Juan’s neighbor Carmen lives simply, in harmony with the land her martyred husband paid for with his life. The Modern Jungle documents their struggles and encounters with outside forces: from capitalism and commodity fetish, to the culture of cinema, and the directors of this film.

Director Biography

Saul Kak is an artist, an activist, a speaker of Zoque and a member of this thousandyear-old culture. The first in his family to attend college, he’s a graduate of UNICACH: the University of Science & Arts of Chiapas. Splitting his time between San Cristóbal de las Casas and his hometown in the Zoque region of Chiapas, Saul is part of the arts collective EDELO, and a frequent collaborator with Galería MUY, a contemporary art enter for indigenous art and artists from across Chiapas.

Charles Fairbanks grew up in Nebraska and wrestled at Stanford, where he studied Art and the History of Science. He has a MFA in Art & Design from the University of Michigan, where he also studied Anthropology and History. The founding professor of Media Arts at Antioch College in Ohio, Fairbanks has worked as a programmer and translator in Belgium, and taught videoarte and cel-phone videography in Mexico. The Modern Jungle is his first feature.