Every year pet lovers have one more chance to demonstrate their love for their canine and fury friends. It’s the Tracie Hotchner’s Dog and Cat Film Festival. This year, the festival occurred on November 3rd at the SVA Theater in Chelsea.
What’s Up New York only attended the Cat Film Festival, which is on its third edition. It was composed of two programs. The first one had eight short films, and the second, 6 films. The films are a combination of animation (Just Visiting), comedy (Feline Paralysis), and melancholic short films (Untouchable Life). With the tickets sales, a portion of the price goes towards a local non profit animal welfare organization. In New York’s case, the beneficiary was Feral Cat Initiative.
Some of the highlights of the festival are:
Cats Cradle
Bruce and Terry Jenkins are a retired couple from Lutz, FL who decided to convert their farmhouse into a hospice and senior cat living facility. The documentary portrays their experience with such vulnerable animals and their decision to establish the animal care complex.
Cat Cafe
This documentary features Cat Town, a cat cafe in Oakland, California, and first cat cafe in the USA. It operates in collaboration with the Oakland Animal Services, which rescues cats for adoption. Cat Town brings in some of the no kill shelter’s cats to boost the animals adoptability. In the establishment, the cat area is separated from the cafe. It charges visitors by hourly time slots as it limits the number of people coming into the cat area at a given time. The visitors are potential adopters. Besides the coffee and goodies, the cafe area also displays artwork from local artist for sale. The proceeds of Cat Town go toward maintaining the establishment as well as helping the adoption network.
In Times of Need
In Tucson, Arizona, an Alzheimer care facility partners with a local animal shelter. The goal of the project is to have the facility’s patients helping to foster kittens. The film reveals that the commitment of the patients in the animals care helped to improve their mental health condition. It is very touching to see how both the patients and their families mutually helped the kittens until they found a “furever” home.
6 Degrees of Pussy
Frederika Duke retells her life story by showing the various siamese and non siamese cats she owned throughout her life. In this humorous documentary, even her children recognized her as a “crazy cat lady.”
Cats My Life
This film by Alice Obar features Sharon James, who rescued and adopted 8 cats while leaving in a one-bedroom apartment in Jersey City, NJ.
The festival will now travel across the country and for upcoming screenings, access the The Dog and Cat Film Festival website. It will sure be an excellent attraction for the whole family.
What's Up New York 