i don't speak for everyone in this jam, but Game of Life can actually be considered a zero-player game for some people, so something like Game of Life probably wouldn't be breaking the rules if the person playing it had some control over the simulation.
if you mean an animation inside a game, then yeah, i'm pretty sure that's allowed
but whether animations without interactivity (i.e. "videos") are allowed as submissions or not is up to the jam creator, i guess