NY Cat and Dog Film Festivals Return After Pandemic Break


Despite their lack of biennial movie celebrations, car chases, explosions, alien invasions, or Daniel Craig as a sullen James Bond, they always attract ardent ticket buyers.

What they have: mustaches, ferocity, and a little intelligence.

them NY Cat Film Festival and NY Dog Film Festivalreturning to Manhattan after a pandemic-induced hiatus. Cat festival, noon screening on Saturday — Global Cat Day – NS Village East by Angelika theaterconsists of 21 short workouts lasting approximately 90 minutes in total. The dog festival, which lasts about two hours, Coming to the same cinema on October 24, contains 20 short films. (Animal lovers outside of New York to see NS festivals, also: They’ll be touring both around the country and in Canada for a few months.)

“I think this is probably the best quality year for both,” he said. tracie hotchner, a writer and radio host based in Vermont dog festival in 2015 and cat edition two years later. In a phone interview, he explained that in the early days of quarantine in 2020, “people couldn’t find toilet paper but they made good movies.”

Unsurprisingly, the pandemic is taking place at both festivals. Inside “will you be my quarantineActress and director Susku Ekim Kaya, a feline comedy, shows herself and her pet Lady Leia in split-screen, typically obsessive lockdown activities such as grooming, watching TV, cell phone scrolling, and FaceTime calling. Jasmin Scuteri-Young’s “The feline protagonists of their villainous characters live harmonious parallel lives.quarantine diary” and Asali Echols’ “House Cats” complain about the constant presence of their owners in human-induced voiceovers.

The subjects of the dog festival, on the other hand, never seem to miss social distancing. “You don’t believe in personal space,” Kyle Scoble says affectionately to Darla, the Labrador retriever-pointer mix.I Recognized My Dog for the Second Time” is a documentary that pays tribute to how Darla spends 2020.

But there may be a reason for cats’ seemingly cold demeanor. “If it’s a house cat, it’s enduring a constant state of isolation.” Who is the Best, a director from Durham, NC said in a phone call.

This observation feeds into “The Great Escape,” in which Best consults Alexa, the digital assistant where a cat named Monkey makes joint attempts to get out of the house, even slamming and meowing around. In Best’s other festival entry, “Cat Capitalization,” his pet, Nube, turns to the internet to market his artistic talent and ostentatious thanks in thought bubbles to mentors like artist Mark Rothko and Vincent van Gogh. (Nube is slightly missing one ear.)

Best said it was aimed at “a satire not only of capitalism, but of academia as well.”

Such humor is a theme of the cat festival, where movies like Nevada Caldwell’s “Feline Noir” and Priscilla Dean’s “Cat Fight at the O’Kay Corral” parodied old Hollywood cliches.

But the dog movie list is not without laughs – David Coole’s animation “go fetch” is a pointed two-minute revenge comedy – with much more in-depth examinations of the human-animal bond that characterizes it. both festivals before.

Love in the Streets”, for example, a Brazilian documentary by Thiago Köche discusses the lives of Pôrto Alegre’s homeless, who often take better care of their dogs than they do. Loyal pets also attract passers-by, who often ignore their owners’ suffering.

“People who love dogs look right behind people,” Hotchner said. “I would like more movies about it because I think that’s what we don’t want to look at.”

“The Comfort Dogs” also demonstrates the power of pet ownership. made by Matthew Salleh and Rose TuckerAn Australian couple living and working together in Brooklyn, the film is an excerpt from their feature-length documentary.We Don’t Deserve Dogs” The segment focuses on: Comfort Dog ProjectProvides pets to young people forced to become child soldiers in Uganda’s civil war.

Salleh said in a joint phone call that ex-servicemen could share “quite distressing” experiences when dogs were with them. “Dogs are almost becoming part of the storytelling method.”

Another documentary. Zach Putnam‘s “Nicola” shows how its subject is a yellow Lab. Dog Companions, a service program for the disabled, not only changed the life of the college student who took it. He also taught a powerful lesson in trust and self-sacrifice to the student who devotedly trained him but was eventually forced to tearfully give up on him.

But both festivals remind viewers that these animals need humans as much as humans need them. Hotchner, who organizes the shows as a labor of love – $20 a ticket each – always contributes a portion of the sale of each screening to a relevant local charity. Cat festival in New York will help support Bideawee’s Wild Cat InitiativeThis year, all dog festival shows will benefit nonprofits associated with it. Saving Senior Dogs Week (25-31 October).

“Covid aside, there is a growing awareness that owning older dogs is enjoyable and is most quickly put to sleep in a shelter,” said Hotchner. by Gary TellalianComedy Legends Share Love for Older Dogs”, you will hear this message from celebrities who are themselves veterans in a public service announcement: Carol Burnett with Bob Newhart and Lily Tomlin Carl ReinerHe died last June at the age of 98.

The plight of dogs without cute puppies is also revealed in documentaries like “.Unspoiled: Journey to Freedom” is about a long journey to transport 53 dogs rescued from Louisiana by Krista Dillane, Emma Lao and Dylan Abad to a pet adoption fair in Rhode Island. In “Chino,” another quote from “We Don’t Deserve Dogs”, his aging subject, a stray dog ​​in Santiago, Chile, only survives as anxious residents provide care.

“The stray dog ​​culture is completely different there,” Tucker said, adding that animals are a way of “bringing an entire community together” – a destination for festivals as well.

NY Cat Film Festival

October 16, Village East by Angelika, Manhattan; catfilmfestival.com.tr

NY Dog Film Festival

October 24, Village East by Angelika, Manhattan; dogfilmfestival.com.tr



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