'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.
At De Uitkijk:
Lauchabo, Yann-Shan Tsai, 2023, Taiwan, 68’
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, Kim Bon Hee, 2022, South Korea, 20'
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.