Documentary Kedi
Leoma Cianchetti
Kedi ([ceˈdi], Turkish for 'Cat') is a 2016 Turkish documentary film directed by Ceyda Torun about the many stray cats that live in Istanbul.[3] It premiered at the !f Istanbul Independent Film Festival on 21 February 2016 before being given a North American theatrical release on 10 February 2017. It debuted on the YouTube Red streaming service on 10 May 2017.[4] It was released on DVD in the US on 14 November 2017. The film received critical acclaim, and grossed over $5 million.[2] Time magazine listed it as one of its top ten films of 2017.[5]
Thousands of street cats live in Istanbul, the largest city in Turkey, as they have for centuries. Some are feral and fend for themselves, while others are tamer and are cared for by people. Kedi depicts these cats, and includes many interviews of the people who interact with them. It focuses on seven of the cats, who were named Sarı, Duman, Beng, Aslan Parası, Gamsız, Psikopat, and Deniz.[6]
The cinematographers constructed a special rig for filming the cats at street level. The filmmakers worked with local residents to get access to continue filming some of the cats when they moved from public to private property.[3]
According to Susan King of the Los Angeles Times, "Kedi opened 12 February 2016 in New York City in just one theater and was the cat's meow with critics, scoring 96% fresh on rottentomatoes.com, and proving to be catnip to movie audiences, charming its way to an impressive $40,000 opening weekend and more than $60,000 for the first week in release. The film opened Feb. 19 in Los Angeles and scooped up an additional $80,000 in seven locations."[8]
On Rotten Tomatoes, Kedi holds an approval rating of 98% based on 128 reviews, and an average rating of 7.8/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Kedi is a cat fancier's dream, but this thoughtful, beautifully filmed look at Istanbul's street feline population offers absorbing viewing for filmgoers of any purr-suasion."[9]
Joe Leydon wrote in Variety, "[Ceyda] Torun, a Turkish-born filmmaker now based in the United States, and cinematographer Charlie Wuppermann, her partner in the production company Termite Films, take their audience on a leisurely yet purposeful journey throughout Istanbul (where Torun was raised) to examine a local phenomenon dating back to the heyday of the Ottoman Empire: Thousands of cats roam freely virtually everywhere and anywhere, peacefully co-existing with humans who learned long ago not to assume they are the masters in this situation."[6]
The humans in Kedi derive deep meaning from the cats with which they interact in a variety of ways. And they see human life (and in some instances fate) as being tied closely to that of their feline friends. The dialogue is so rich I found myself literally transcribing the entire documentary, I had to hold myself back from publishing it in its entirety and did my best to show restraint in the excerpts I quote below.
The love and admiration for these comes at times from the most unexpected places. A large burly fisherman with a weathered face syringe feeds abandoned kittens. A gentle man with large hands carries an injured kitten to a vet. A slight, gentle looking man who suffered a nervous breakdown and attributes his recovery to caring for the cats walks the streets laden with plastic bags full of raw meat each day. A fishmonger gently tosses small fish to kittens, ensuring each receives one.
Unless you speak Turkish, you will need to use subtitles, but soon you will barely notice them. It's available on Netflix or at your library. Kedi is a fascinating and amazing documentary that anyone and everyone should watch (not just cat lovers).
Spectacular or non-narrative qualities might characterize the cat video, but even then, this is complicated. Cat videos, such as those issued by Cole and Marmalade, often supply text as complement to the sound and image in order produce story and character. And when not internally supplied, distribution and exhibition platforms become the means of imposing and directing meaning. The poster of a video can offer contextualizing statements, and viewers certainly offer their thoughts in comments sections. Cat videos and their subjects are even subject to meaning making through fandoms, where information is sought out and pages followed. Not an expert in the production of cat celebrity (if I were, more would know my own Mieke), I can nonetheless name celebrity cats, made famous in their videos and image macros: Maru, Grumpy Cat, and Lil Bub, to mention a few.
Throughout, the cats are linked to Istanbul itself, whether to its history as a port city, which is how many of the cats arrived, or to the ways communities come together around the care of a cat. Men and women take on the feeding of cats in their homes, workplaces, and tours of neighborhoods. Vets care for local cats free of charge, or people donate to the cause. It is this deeply woven portrait of human, cat, and city that make the indications of change so painful. Developing highways sweep away cat and human life both, changing this landscape and its character. Although Torun disavows any political intention for this film, the praise of a human and non-human bond and the lament of its erosion resonates with the Gezi Park protests that took place the year before the shooting of the documentary. In these, the rally against the closing of a public park called attention to the need for human and non-human communion, and in the government crackdowns that followed, a suggestion of how deeply enmeshed such communion is with how one envisions a hopeful society.
To ask then, if Kedi is an extended cat video might too readily reify the distinctions between animal videos (and their delivery mechanisms) and documentary. Or, as I hope, this question invites continued exploration of the documentary work and nature of the digital phenomenon of animal videos.
With the brooding uncertainty, Kedi reinvents the city symphony genre by pondering both its ante-industrial prehistory and its post-industrial afterlife, and by infusing rigorous editorial choreography with whimsical feline contingency.
Respect and love for animals pervades the film. Sometimes interviewees love animals more than people; one woman says that if there's an afterlife, she wants to meet her cat there, not her grandmother.
The people (and most of the cats) in the film aren't given names, and viewers don't learn much about their personal lives, but they do reveal themselves by what they believe about the cats around them. All of the human subjects admire and love their cat companions and have interesting thoughts about their place in the world.
Cats claw and hiss at each other. A man cares for kittens who were "dumped" near his boat. Some cats look a little dirty and battle-scarred (though most appear remarkably healthy). A cat stalks (but doesn't kill) mice. A kitten is attacked by a bigger cat (off screen); viewers see him being taken, limp, to a vet but never hear the outcome. People talk of cats who died of cancer or were run over by cars. Cats eat dead, sometimes-headless fish.
Parents need to know that Kedi is a charming, "cat's eye"-view documentary about felines who live wild in the city of Istanbul. It's gentle enough for younger viewers, but it's in Turkish, with subtitles, so kids who aren't reading yet (or are reluctant readers) may not be interested. There's no cursing, substance abuse, or sex (other than the occasional reference to cats being pregnant or having kittens). But people do talk frankly about cats being killed by cars or cancer, though no deaths happen onscreen. Some of the cats look a bit ragged, but most seem healthy. They occasionally fight and hiss/claw at each other. Some cats stalk mice; no mice are killed on camera, but cats do occasionally steal and eat (already dead, sometimes headless) fish from shop owners. Respect and love for animals pervades the film, and you'd be hard pressed not to feel compassion for the cats after watching. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails.
In most cities, cats are kept indoors, safe from cars and predators, yet forced to live a predictable domestic life. But the warm-hearted documentary KEDI focuses on the thousands of cats who freely roam the streets of Istanbul, owned by no one. Some are scavengers, eating from trash cans and sleeping anywhere they can curl up comfortably. Others are the darlings of their neighborhoods, given their choice of fancy people-food tidbits and lovingly cared for by human friends. Kedi watches these cats going about their lives and talks to the people who feed, pet, and care for them, who offer plenty of diverse, even philosophical opinions on the cats and what they mean and bring to the lives of those who know them.
Sweet, loving, and filled with beautiful visuals of cats and the surprisingly moving and fanciful thoughts of those who know them, this documentary scores on multiple levels. Cat-lovers will be instantly charmed by Kedi's cat's-eye-level cinematography, which must have been filmed by someone literally lying on the ground. It turns the cats into the stars of the film, while people are mostly a jumble of legs, occasionally popping into the frame for a few minutes to relate stories or anecdotes about "their" neighborhood cat: how the cat came to hang around, what he or she eats, the things they notice about the cat's behavior, and their effect on the humans around them.
These humans love their cat friends so much that it's beautiful to watch. "She nearly passes out when you pet her," says a shopkeeper, scratching his furry friend on her chest. "That's the spot!" he smiles, talking over the cat's thunderous purr and telling her "you really know how to live." They do. The Istanbul cats are fierce and wild, stealing food from stores, begging at restaurants, preying on mice, birthing litters of kittens in cardboard boxes and abandoned basements, competing with each other. But they're lovely, and loved too, by people who are happy to let them roam free and to see them each day. "Having a relationship with cats must be a lot like being friends with aliens," says one interviewee. "You make contact with a very different life form." We're just glad that this life-affirming documentary gives us a chance to look and listen in on that life form for a while.
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