Goodbye to All Cats

A Lord of the Rings tour guide in New Zealand processes his grief in a wonderful way.

Crazy cat lady or world-class musician? You decide. Dorian Rence smashes our notions of what matters and who counts in "Feral Love." Dorian was the seventh woman to join the New York Philharmonic. In her 40-year career she has performed with all the greats: Leonard Bernstein, Pierre Boulez, Zubin Mehta, Yo Yo Ma to name a few. And she cares for a feral cat colony in the tunnels of New York City.

In the small mountain town of Barga, Italy, a group of four filmmakers speak with local cat lovers and immerse themselves in the unique world of street-trotting felines and Gattaras.

An ample community of cats has set up home around the Shinto shrine in Ushimado. Some local residents take care of them, others are disturbed by their mess. Kazuhiro Soda observes their co-existence with kindness, precision and occasional involvement.

Seeing is to painting what listening is to politics. Survival as an artist demands both. Paint Until Dawn is a documentary on art in the life of James Gahagan (1927-1999), who painted all night to push the limits of vision. His life and thought reveal a correlation between art and activism through an interesting angle: the creative process itself.

A carefree Japanese cat! A proud Taiwanese Cat! A witty Korean cat?! I want to be happy too! A road movie about stray cats seeking happiness.

Sign of the Times is the first feature length documentary about New Zealand's Deaf community, their language and culture. It is an inspiring, emotional, and very moving story told straight from the very heart of the Deaf community. I n April 2006 New Zealand Parliament declared New Zealand Sign Language (NZSL) to be an official language - the culmination of a 20-year battle by the deaf community, and a true hallmark in the recognition of their native language. Sign of the Times is about the Deaf New Zealanders who fought to have their language recognised as a real language and as a viable means of communication The film documents the community's celebration of the official recognition of their language and looks at the community's ongoing hopes and aspirations for their language and culture. This is your invitation to take a journey into the Deaf world.

Shot for an Australian Travel Agents Seminar, this short film seeks to portray 1969 New Zealand as a hip and happening place. The tourism clichés of a scenic wonderland remain, but the film attempts to present a more sophisticated NZ to entice jet-set Aussies east. After all, we "got rid of six o'clock closing ages ago." To complement the Anzac staples of sport, beer and gambling there are mountains and Māori. Nightclubs offer show bands and strippers for "relaxation" after strenuous days of sightseeing. C’mon is a fascinating snapshot of a nation in transition.

This 1944 newsreel documents arrivals at a Wellington wharf from the Middle East: New Zealand soldiers and Polish children. For the refugees it was the conclusion of an epic wartime survival tale: an exodus from Poland via Siberian labour camps, to being greeted by Prime Minister Peter Fraser in NZ. The Poles then take the train past waving crowds to their new home: a camp in Pahīatua. Twenty years later the children were revisited in Kathleen O’Brien’s classic 1966 documentary The Story of Seven-Hundred Polish Children.

From Christchurch, a coach load of visitors tour the southern part of the South Island, visiting the Hermitage Hotel at Mount Cook, Queenstown and district, the Eglinton Valley, Milford Sound, and Dunedin. Also catalogued as 'South Island Coach Tour'.

Cats are the most popular companion animals in the western world. In the UK their numbers have swollen to more than 10 million. This is great news for the cat lovers amongst us but for those who see Felis silvestris catus as nothing more than a garden pest, it can feel like an epidemic. Cat Wars meets those on both sides of the feline divide to find out what really gets people so worked up about the humble moggy. This BBC One documentary also meets some of the more fanatical cat owners out there, including Silvana and her 50 cats and Helen, who likes to take her prized pets for a stroll round the block in a baby buggy.

The film 'Canterbury is One Hundred' was produced by the National Film Unit in 1950 to celebrate the region's centennial. Written and directed by Oxley Hughan, it emphasises the bucolic agricultural productivity of the Canterbury region, particularly through the lambing and wheat-growing industries. Life in Canterbury's cities is presented as people 'taking pleasure in their neat gardens and comfortable wooden houses', in contrast to the rustic huts built by the early settlers a century earlier. The film is also a poignant tribute to Christchurch's celebrated Neo-Gothic architecture, much of which was destroyed following the February 2011 earthquake.

This promotional travelogue, made for the Christchurch City Council, shows off the city and its environs. Filmed at a time when New Zealand’s post-war economy was booming as it continued its role as a farmyard for the “Old Country”, it depicts Christchurch as a prosperous city, confident in its green and pleasant self-image as a “better Britain” (as James Belich coined NZ’s relationship to England), and architecturally dominated by its cathedrals, churches and schools. Many of these buildings were severely damaged or destroyed in the earthquakes of 2010 and 2011.

Why is the gap between the rich and the poor growing faster in New Zealand than in most other OECD countries? And why is inequality bad for all of us? Award winning documentary maker Bryan Bruce files his special report on what’s gone wrong with our economy and what we can do about it.

A community of cats lives in the Soledade Cemetery Park in Belém. "7 Vidas" follows these animals through a fictional letter written by one of them to his former owner. With real images of the cats among graves and trees, the film builds a sensitive narrative about abandonment, freedom and memory, revealing the poetry hidden in the coexistence between life and death.

Frank Furko, an 80-year-old eccentric in the Pittsburgh suburbs, takes stock of his life and tries to reconcile his forty years working on the family farm with his domineering father, the end of his 20 year marriage, and his role as a celebrity derived from Pudgie Wudgie, his 20-pound performing house-cat. Supported by Frank's twenty years of VHS video archives, the film explores memory, loss, friendship and mortality.

The real story behind the oft-ridiculed 'cat lady' - a cultural stereotype and figure of ridicule for women of a certain age with too many furry companions. Through the intimate portrait of four unique 'cat ladies' we create a sensitive and emotionally honest portrait of women whose lives and self-worth have become intractably linked to cats. It's not the number of cats that defines someone as a 'cat lady', but rather their attachment, or non-attachment, to human beings. They create a world with their cats in which they are accepted and in control - a world where they ultimately have value.

From pampered show cats to strays in Miami, NGC explores the human bond with felines and the killer that still lives in these beloved companions.

'Ink and Gold: An Artist's Journey to Olympic Glory' is a short form documentary that follows the journey of New Zealand artist and athlete, Zakea Page, winning the Lausanne 2020 Youth Olympic Games medal design competition and fulfilling a lifelong dream to perform at the opening ceremonies. The film was shot over the course of one week in Lausanne, Switzerland, at the 2020 Youth Olympic Games and weaved together with self-taped footage of Zakea's younger years as an athlete and artist. Accompanied with interviews of his family, 'Ink and Gold' highlights the connection between art and sport in bringing together peoples of diverse cultures and backgrounds to bridge barriers of language and foster connections, mutual understanding, and respect for one another.

Cats are the most popular pets in Europe, with twelve million living in Germany alone. And yet: hardly anyone knows how they live and what they do as soon as they leave their home. Where do they go? Martina Treusch's documentary takes a closer look at the nature and fascination of these popular animals.