Review: Kedi (on DVD)

Kedi
a film by Ceyda Torun [DVD 636.8 Ked]

I’ll have to admit to two things — I’m much more of a “dog” person than a “cat” person, and I’m strongly opposed to cats roaming loose — I have a hate/hate relationship with several neighborhood cats that have chosen to use parts of my yard as their personal litter boxes.

None-the-less, when I saw the trailer for this film on another DVD I was watching from the libraries’ collection, it looked fascinating. And I’m glad I watched it. This documentary is charmingly look at human-cat relationships in Istanbul, a community which has had thousands of cats living on the streets since the days of the Ottoman Empire. The film cuts between fluid footage following several specific cats on their rounds through the city, to interviews with the humans those cats choose to interact with. The humans don’t claim to “own” any of these feline friends, but several have been adopted by some of the four-legged types. The humans have various poignant observations to make about the therapeutic and even spiritual advantages of relationships with the cats — “They absorb all your negative energy,” one shopkeeper comments. “They do me good.”

But most of the film focuses directly on the lives of the cats, with a calm, soft-spoken narrator offering brief explanations of the different cats’ personalities, and how the changing urban landscape of Istanbul is impacting these furry citizens of the city.

This is a pleasant, low-key stroll through an exotic city, its residences and street-front businesses, in the company of some fuzzy locals who enjoy the company of human beings, but don’t feel the need to be restricted to one patch of ground. Recommended for cat lovers and anyone interested Istanbul, Turkey.

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Tamed and Untamed: Close Encounters of the Animal Kind by Sy Montgomery, To Catch a Cat: How Three Stray Kittens Rescued Me by Heather Green, or Call of the Cats: What I Learned About Love and Life From a Feral Colony by Andrew Bloomfield.]

[ Internet Movie Database entry for this film ] | [ official Kedi web site ]

Recommended by Scott C.
Bennett Martin Public Library

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