Cat Food

Joyce Wieland | 1969

Totally unfamiliar with Joyce Wieland until tonight - this immediately fascinated...

A cat eats its methodical way through a polymorphous fish. The projector devours the ribbon of film at the same rate, methodically. The lay of Grimnir mentions a wild boar whose magical flesh was nightly devoured by the heroes of Valhalla, and miraculously regenerated next morning in the kitchen. The fish in Wieland's film, and the miraculous flesh of the film itself, are reconstructed on the rewinds to be devoured again. Here is a Dionysian metaphor, old as the West, of immense strength. Once we see that the fish is the protagonist of the action, this metaphor reverberates to incandescence in the mind." | Hollis Frampton

[Dionysus is the god of wine, ecstasy, and intoxication.]

Only a cat, eating fish after fish, is shown on the screen. But this process is recorded by exceptionally observing every motion of the animal -- its eyes closed in gusto, the small claws of the cat's graceful paw diving into the fish... The New Yorker compared this film even to the works of the famous Jean-Luc Godard. | Kaunas International Film Festival

*Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for "fair use" for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Fair use is a use permitted by copyright statute that might otherwise be infringing. Non-profit, educational or personal use tips the balance in favor of fair use.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• short
• avant-garde
• experimental
• non-narrative
• cat
• fish

[denisethepainter]

I love this! Thanks for posting this^^ You always share the most amazing films my friend.