Special

Asian Movie Night: Cat Got Your Tongue

Hoezo in KINO

Cat Got Your Tongue is a film program by Asian Movie Night, engaging with screening, poetry reading, talks and a nail salon. The two 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”.

Credits

Regie: Jon Frickey & Kim Hee Joo
Speelduur: 90 minuten
Land: Japan & South Korea

Storyline

Cat Days, JJ, 2018, Japan, Denmark, 11’
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.

Don’t Feed the Stray Cats, Kim Hee Joo, 2020, South Korea, 79’
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 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.

Guest curator this evening is Hyeisoo Kim (she/her). She 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.