Cat Got Your Tongue is Asian Movie Night Autumn Edition, engaging with screening, poetry reading, talks and a nail salon. Films in this program share stories about people staying with difficulties and troubles in their lives while making kinship with stray cats. Their kinship doesn’t ask for reconciliation or restoration because cats don’t see sickness, disability or age as a pathology. Perhaps they think human beings are pathologic in violating life by enforcing castration or breeding. Thus the protagonists of the films are vulnerable in our eyes but not in the eyes of cats.
In Korea, there are “캣맘” or cat-moms who feed stray cats. They are often not welcomed by their neighbours who prefer to live in a “smooth city”. In a smooth city, stray cats are seen as disgusting, and the Cat-mom’s care is disorderly behaviour. Likewise, refugee centres, red-light districts, and waste disposal centres have been displaced from the city, to be moved to somewhere invisible, because their roughness ruins the clean cityscape. It makes us think about what it means to live together. What kind of city do we want to live in, and with whom? With this reflection, films encourage us to ask what care is and how two different species practice “getting on together”.
Cat Got Your Tongue
is made up of 3 feature films and 2 shorts.
Cat Got Your Tongue
will be screened at KINO Rotterdam (02.10), Cavia Amsterdam (04.10), Prostitution Information Centre Amsterdam (05.10),
De Uitkijk Amsterdam (16.10), FOCUS Arnhem (23.10) and De Kurk Arnhem (07.11).
Join us for poetry readings after screenings in Cavia and De Kurk.
When you encounter a cat in the street, you might feel like the observed or the observer. Who's the subject? At that moment, you and the cat are trying to move something together, creating subtle tremors in everydayness.
In this poetry reading, everyone is welcome to share their own things, moments or beings that you could call a cat, recalling "very tiny barely surviving" beings.
PROGRAM of KINO Rotterdam
Wednesday 02.10.2024
18:45 - 19:00 Doors open
19:00 - 19:05 Opening (5’)
19:05 - 19:16 Screening of Cat Days (11’)
19:16 - 20:35 Screening of Don’t Feed Stray Cats (79’)
22:35 End
TICKETS
€13.20 (CJP/Student €10.00)
Cineville card free
KINO
PROGRAM of CAVIA Amsterdam
Friday 04.10.2024
20:30 - 20:35 Intro (5’)
20:35 - 22:05 Screening of Cat’s Apartment (88’)
22:05 - 22:30 Poetry readings
22:30 End
TICKETS
€5,- / Cineville card free
It’s not possible to make reservations. Tickets can be bought at the bar half an hour before the film starts.
CAVIA
PROGRAM of PIC Amsterdam
Saturday 05.10.2024
20:00 - 20:05 Intro (5’)
20:05 - 20:25 Screening of Kitty Chatter (20’)
20:25 - 21:25 Screening of
Lauchabo
(68’)
21:30 - 22:00 Aftertalk presented by one of the window workers
22:00 End
The entrance is free
PIC
PROGRAM of
De Uitkijk
Amsterdam
Wednesday 16.10.2024
21:00 - 21:05 Intro (5’)
21:05 - 21:25 Screening of Kitty Chatter (20’)
21:25 - 22:25 Screening of
Lauchabo
(68’)
22:30 End
TICKETS
€12,50 (CJP/Student 10,-) / Cineville card free
De Uitkijk
PROGRAM of FOCUS Arnhem
Wednesday 26.06.2024
19:00 - 19:05 Intro (5’)
19:05 - 20:45 Screening of Cat’s Apartment (88’)
20:45 End
TICKETS
€12.00 (Student €8.00)
Cineville card free
Focus
PROGRAM of De Kurk Arnhem
Thursday 07.11.2024
19:00 - 19:05 Opening (5’)
19:05 - 19:16 Screening of Cat Days (11’)
19:16 - 20:35 Screening of Don’t Feed Stray Cats (79’)
20:35-21:00 Poetry reading
21:00 End
Entrance is free
De Kurk
ABOUT
The Prostitution Information Center (PIC) is a local non-profit organization that is organized by sex-workers and is located at the heart of De Wallen in Amsterdam. The center provides accurate information from a sex worker perspective and fights the myths and misperceptions about sex work. Since the Amsterdam city council announced the replacement of the erotic center to Zuid, the PIC as well as local sex workers are facing possible eviction from the neighborhood and are being framed as criminal and unwanted.
Curator
Hyeisoo Kim (she/her) collectively engages with different cultural projects based in the Netherlands and South Korea. Last 8 years, she has worked at Filmhuis Cavia in Amsterdam as a programmer, collaborating with diverse communities, such as Asian Movie Night and queer.red presents, also co-organizing the Porn Film Festival Amsterdam in 2024. Currently, she is following a Research Master in Cultural Analysis at the University of Amsterdam focusing on sexuality and care through post-porn politics.
Supported by Gemeente Arnhem,
Het Cultuur Fond.
Cats’ Apartment
Dir.
Jung Jae Eun
/ 2020 / KR / 88’ / Korean w/ EN subs
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Cats' Apartment is a documentary film about the migration process of cats who lost their homes due to the reconstruction of Dunchon Jugong Apartment (12,032 households) in Seoul. The area is designed for humans by humans, but many other species' lives coexist. After the complex was abandoned, it had been squatted by cats. However, their lives were at stake when demolition began. Who owns the city? Are urban spaces pursuing a 'city only for humans' without a sense of responsibility for other living things? The film conveys sympathy and comfort to all vulnerable people in the city who had to leave the area by recording violence from the cats' perspectives.
Don’t Feed the Stray Cats
Dir.
Kim Hee Joo
/ 2020 / KR / 79’ /
Korean w/ EN subs
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Na Young is a "cat mom" caring for stray cats day and night. Due to her disability and worsening conditions, she cannot afford to arrange her meals, yet she continues to care for cats. People blame her for it, but Na Young continues to live and care in this way.
The director found Na Young through her diary postings on an online cat mom community. Her writings contained various emotions and experiences of companionship with non-human beings. This film questions what social care is, and how we can go beyond a human-centric sense of caring and belonging.
Lauchabo
Dir.
Yann-Shan Tsai
/ 2023 / TW / 68’ / Mandarin w/ EN subs![]()
In 1997, the sudden abolition of licenced prostitution in Taipei City compelled 128 licenced prostitutes to take to the streets. Bailan, a protesting sex worker, fell into a coma in 2005. Using intricate takes and archive footage, this film unfolds her life after the abolition of legal prostitution. It portrays the oppression of everyday people by policy and politics, while also highlighting warmth in relationships among people and with cats.
Tsai Yann-shan graduated from the Department of Sociology at National Taiwan University and earned an MFA from the City College of New York. She began her career as an assistant director and has worked on documentary films. She has been working as a film editor since 2016.
Kitty-Chatter
Dir.
Kim Bon Hee
/ 2022 / KR / 20’ /
Korean w/ EN subs
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In the countryside village of Gyeongju, a grandma from Eupcheon house lives. While it may look like she spends the whole day alone in a small kitchen, her day is quite eventful. Jjongi, a cat who keeps meowing for food at every mealtime, and her friend from Jeonan house, visit her every day. The two grandmas share a slice of watermelon, sow seeds in each other’s garden, or know that they will meet the next day again after all the bantering. Of course, Jjongi joins them by meowing.
Cat Days
Dir.
Jon Frickey
/ 2018/ JP DK / 11’ / English
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Jiro, a little boy, feels sick. His father takes him to the doctor. She diagnoses a harmless case of cat flu. However, according to the doctor, this means that Jiro must be a cat. As father and son try to cope with the boy’s new identity, things go awry.
