Cats of Malta
Sarah JayneCats of Malta takes audiences on a journey through the island's colorful cat colonies, cafes, parks and streets to meet the volunteer feeders and artists whose lives are enriched by stray cats..
From household cats to mythical panthers, from jaguars in the forest to lions in legend, felines have always prowled through our stories. This program traces their presence across history, culture, and science fiction—creatures at once sacred, feared, and fantastical. The selection brings together works that move between scientific observation and poetic speculation, from intimate portraits of domestic companions to sweeping tales of wild predators and imagined hybrids. Together, these films, essays, and visual experiments reveal the feline world in all its diversity: symbols of mystery, power, fragility, and transformation.
Cats of Malta takes audiences on a journey through the island's colorful cat colonies, cafes, parks and streets to meet the volunteer feeders and artists whose lives are enriched by stray cats..
The Cat and the Fox starts a journey to find a stray wolf. The two friends follow his track which brings them to meet the people who collect his story. Going from witness to witness, they will understand that the fascination surrounding this animal also comes from bizarre tales and imaginative legen
There has not yet been any applied work of Metacinema. It was necessary to give the path to methodological problems. That is the reason why I decided to choose the purest subject to analyze. That is a subject composed of a single "substance".
In a dull, organised world, a curious girl longs for some colour and joy — against the wishes of her rule-obeying mother. When the girl follows a strange cat who doesn't fully fit into society's black and white standards, she discovers a boisterous underground filled with life. She decides to
Goodbye to All Cats is about the movement to remove all domestic cats from a unique island ecosystem, New Zealand, to protect endangered endemic species, including many ground nesting birds and the short-tailed bat, which evolved without mammalian predators, and are crucial to the unique biodiversit
A stray cat drinks spoiled milk
Us 4 IRIOMOTE the Movie is a documentary journey through the natural and cultural life of Iriomote Island, registered as a UNESCO World Natural Heritage site. Filmed over three years, it captures the island's seasons, rituals, and biodiversity while following Kinsei and Akiko Ishigaki, who dedicate
A family of tigers suffer the consequences of increased intrusions into the forest by the human communities living on the edge of the Tadoba tiger reserve.
Filmed over a week during the Festa della Madonna or L'Assunzione (Festival of the Assumption) in the medieval town of Tusa, Sicily, depicting the spectacle through quiet moments of everyday life from the perspective of the stray cats of Tusa's narrow medieval streets and a family of Cirneco dell' E
Alice Obar's documentary about the life of a cat rescuer, surrounded by her "children," the stray kitties she has saved. Featured in the 2019 New York Cat Film Festival and the 2019 Brooklyn Feline Film Festival, Cats My Life shines a light on a woman in a resource-impoverished neighborhood whose li
Barron Sherer, "Spectacular Jasper", 2025, Super 8mm film and digital transfer, Silent, 1:51 This personal and kinetic collage features rescue cats Jasper and Ringo, along with a touch of the action film style joy they've brought to the Sherer household.
This animation is part of the "Taïga Maya" DVD tinyurl.com/qy8kfuz and artelligences.com/taiga-maya/?lang=en There is quite a saga behind it as it started, many years ago, with a sketch I made on a beautiful music by L'Arpeggiata vimeo.com/201462154 (more info on the whole process there) Thierr
Curly's Thanksgiving is a 12-minute experimental short film by acclaimed filmmaker Bill Morrison. Shot using a GoPro camera, the film offers a cat's-eye view of the world, following Curly, a 2½-year-old tabby cat, as he explores his surroundings. The film culminates in a Thanksgiving feast, p
Hearing, seeing and smelling are the avenues of perception that fundamentally shape the story of the rubber collector Edi Purnomo, just as the flora and fauna shape the Malayan jungle. The tiger can smell humans at a distance of two kilometres; its sudden appearance silences the birds and monkeys, a
Buddy, an old stray cat in Toronto, had managed to conquer a small territory of his own in the city center. The filmmaker met Buddy's gaze every time she went out. She befriended her neighbor and captured his last autumn with her old 35mm hand cranked movie camera. Delight at Robert St. is a visual
You can spend a wintery Sunday afternoon with your child at a Danish zoo. On this particular day, a unique attraction awaits you. The staff at the zoo have set up a remarkable, mystic event involving the body of a young lion. Animals are also beautiful on the inside. But not all the spectators succu
A cat chases a mouse. The mouse disappears into her hole. The cat looks into the hole. What the cat sees there frightens her. Playing the djembe only helps for a moment. While trying to catch the ear butterfly, she almost overlooks the abyss. Something is lost. What follows are desperate attempts to
An exuberant 12-year-old girl named Kylie is diagnosed with terminal cancer. In her final days, she is comforted by an intuitive rescue kitten she names Liza, an "angel" who never leaves her side, and later also helps the grieving family.
Using trap-motion cameras, wildlife photographer Carlton Ward charts the habitat of the elusive – and vanishing – Florida panther. Filmmaker Eric Bendick follows Ward and cohorts as they pursue the perfect photograph that they believe will change the tide of public indifference to govern
Sophie(24) wants to have a cat with her boyfriend Jack(27), only to find he's not ready for it, or anything else.
El gato doméstico como testigo de la pérdida, contrastando su calma con el ruido/inmediatez del humano contemporáneo. El ronroneo puede considerarse un hecho biológico (vibración Hz), y al mismo tiempo, un acto cultural de afecto. ----------------------------------
"Bela" follows the day in the life of a street performer named Bela Erdei or "the cat man". Bela, a recognizable face to some, travels hours by train throughout the south of France to perform with his affectionate house cats. An affable and eccentric character who has a real passion for what he does
Akin is a meditation on the ambiguous nature of interspecies difference. Humans and cats are featured side by side. Dilating pupils, eye movements, and bellies rising and falling with each breath suggest intimate similarities, yet there are undeniable differences. Our pets, particularly mammals, evo
Struggling to fill the void left by her missing cat, a woman has a queer encounter with an unexpected visitor. When the cat returns, the visitor is abandoned to a life of profound invisibility, which prompts a macabre test of their social obscurity.
We see a snapshot of a young couple with a cat. The little animal, which they took along with them when fleeing Syria, is tenderly wrapped in a baby sling; in the background is the sea. A message flashes: "This is Rodina and Silver, owners of Zaytouna". #theircatsaswell uses WhatsApp to help trace o
Based on a true story from my art teacher in China. A cat adopted a baby and build the relationship between two fragile souls. I used hand-drawn, cut-out, sand, paint on glass animation to create this animation.
LOOKS tells the story of a gray lynx that doesn't quite fit into a world of colourful animals. He's being excluded and bullied by the coloured animals. On his search for acceptance and belonging he finds himself resorting to drastic measures... The film deals with social exlusion and bullying and ai
A documentary about a very shy feral cat adopted by people at the public tennis courts in a NYC park and how she came to trust a very few of them.
Puck remembers the night when his cat gave birth to kittens in his bed.
A montage of photography, poetry, and music on the enduring spiritual bonds between companion cats and their people.
A documentary about a young cat who is adopted into a senior cat retirement home where he is a charming troublemaker.
More than half a million feral cats prowl the streets of New York City, struggling to survive each day. With no official policies in place to aid the abandoned animals or curb their growing population, animal welfare activists enter the breach. The Cat Rescuers follows four dedicated, street-smart v
The bittersweet life story of a young girl who grows up to be a crazy old cat lady.
The authorities of Mumbai are cutting down thousands of trees to expand the public transport network, threatening a forest where a community of 10,000 indigenous people live. At the forefront, Prakash Bhoir leads a relentless battle to protect this sacred land and the leopard they venerate. In this
Hundreds of felines inhabit the quiet island of Tashirojima, outnumbering the few elderly residents who maintain a life steeped in fading Japanese culture.
The filmmaker Ascan Breuer searches for the spirit of a tiger said to have haunted the house of his ancestors on Java. Locating this spirit is no easy matter, as it must be summoned in a respectful manner. A number of stories have grown up about it, personified as the family´s grandfather, as
Short film series on the sensory world of house cats. This is part I of III.
Gain an immediate insight into the pressures on the decreasing tiger population in India by following the sad trail of one young tiger who left the Ranthambore preserve.
Christian lives with his two cats Marmelade and Katjuscha. As he is yearning to become a father, he decides to fertilize his beloved cat Marmelade by an exquisite tomcat from abroad.
For years, there have been reports of a large, black panther stalking the Glastonbury countryside. Crew at the festival say the cat is an open secret, although they disagree whether it is an escaped wildcat or fantastical apparition. Regardless, those who have seen the cat agree: it has shiny dark f
What were Catherine and Louis thinking when they chose a cat with distinctive white spots? It would have been much easier to replace if they had picked the all-back one! Now, they will have to tell their daughter Sophie that Nugget's dead. Unless…
Balloon Cat, at its heart, is a film about reflection. While focused on the cat floating through space, the meat of the film takes place within the cat's mind. As his physical journey progresses, the cat reflects on his life, ultimately revealing how he got into his predicament in the first place.
"Ophelia / The Cat Lady" is a two-part experimental short film by Tom Chomont. "Ophelia" draws inspiration from John Everett Millais' painting, featuring a woman submerged in a bathtub, evoking themes of femininity and mortality. "The Cat Lady" juxtaposes footage of a woman petting a cat with revers
Joyce Wieland's work Catfood yet again reflects the director's indelible love for details and, so it seems, the smallest everyday things.
Centered around the Asiatic Cheetah, an endangered species, which was believed to have been extinct before 1996,. 'The Last Surviving Cheetahs" us a retracing of the director's journey to discover the Asiatic cheetahs in remote regions of Iran, and features footage gathered over 20 years of document
The film is not yet available. Stay tuned for release date On a train trip through spatial and temporal dimensions the traveller suddenly comes across himself. #cat
This photo-collage animation is a surreal fairy tale that begins when a girl is awakened one morning by a mysterious seagull. She follows the bird to an abandoned garden, where she discovers the edge ...
Time and again, the feature film places animal actors at the side of its human protagonists – sometimes as loyal companions, sometimes as fierce opponents. However, its stagings do not only instrumentalise animals to release emotions, but also raise a fundamental question of our anthropocentri
It is year 2039. An artificial intelligence with the affective capaticies of a kitten becomes the first non-human governor. She leads a politician-free zone with a network of Artificial Intelligences. She lives in mobile devices of the citizens and can love up to 3 Million people
During the worst economic crisis in Cuba in the 90's, Manolo, a lion tamer decides to bring home a lion from the National Circus in order to care for him.
Catnip is all the rage with today's modern feline, but do we really understand it? Is it a source for harmless kicks, or a potentially crippling addiction? Is it a tool to expand one's consciousness, or a downward spiraling path that can eventually lead to insanity? Once and for all the facts about
A cat imagines himself as a white tiger swordsman fighting its archenemy in the dream, only to discover unexpected ties and buried emotions as the feline fantasy unfolds.
The cultural relationship between residents of Gujarat, India and the last remaining population of Asiatic Lions in the world is explored in this film. With fewer than 50 lions in the wild at the turn of the 21st century, rural communities worked with the government to create a haven for this top pr
A Tasmanian tiger wanders around in his zoo enclosure. A glacier is slowly melting. Facing its predicted disappearance, nature exerts its fury, bursts over the frame and resists its extinction by transformation.
Mr. Lee, an adopted stray cat, would routinely disappear from his South Carolina home for days at a time. Intrigued by Mr. Lee's whereabouts, his owner, Juergen, a German engineer, created a camera designed to fit around the feline's neck. Engineered to capture continuous photographs, Juergen hoped
As a malfunctioning cargo spaceship is threatening to crash to the Earth, Claire is going through a difficult Winter.
If This Ain't Heaven is a 27-minute experimental documentary that offers an intimate portrait of Mr. G, a 50-year-old African American man living in New York City. Through his interactions with his cat, Africa, Mr. G reveals a world of imagination and companionship, alleviating his solitude by attri
A Bolivian park ranger and a young Hong Kongese journalist risk their lives to go undercover and investigate a new, deadly jaguar trade that's sweeping South America. Along the way, they grapple with questions of empathy, responsibility, and bridging a cultural gap to prevent the jaguar trade from s
The extraordinary story of Eshete, a refugee who escaped war in Ethiopia as a young man and is now a devoted caretaker of a feral cat colony in New York City. Eshete has become the heart of a close-knit community while living on the streets. Together with neighbours who help feed the cats and look o
In a version of Kolkata, India rendered unliveable by sea level rise, things take a dark turn when a family of climate change refugees are ambushed by a tiger on the flooded streets.
The big cats. For millennia, mankind has revered them, the source of our greatest wonders, and our greatest fears. But in the modern day, what has become of the relationship between us? Photojournalist Aaron Gekoski has spent his life documenting the interplay of people and planet, now he's turning
Alzheimer's blurred many memories for Lillian, and the pandemic lockdown only added to her sense of disorientation. During this critical period, Humane Society Silicon Valley's pet pantry program provided her family with donated food for their beloved rescue cats, who continue to bring joy to Lillia
Nora began rescuing cats in 2021 after finding an abandoned kitten on their block in Crown Heights. Since then, caring for the stray cats of New York has become a large part of both their and their partner's lives.
This black-and-white video features a black-and-white long-haired cat named Henri, who is a perpetually depressed nihilist. The film also includes poorly pronounced French narration accompanied by amusing English subtitles and a soundtrack.
Jaime falls dead abruptly, while he works on his field in the Ecuadorian Andean paramo. He is the newest victim of a deadly and mysterious disease that has struck his Indigenous commune. As his body lies lifeless on the ground, his animal spirit emerges from his body. He wanders through the Andean m
Every time Laura (in her mid-30s) faces a conflict, she avoids it by adopting a cat, and now she has thirteen. One day, she leaves home on her way to the animal shelter to adopt a new one, but a last-minute burst of lucidity means she ends up in the office of a psychologist, Ana (in her mid-60s), so
In the Mexican jungle, the jaguar prowls and haunts the minds of the people. As different perspectives on this nocturnal predator intersect, a child who is gradually losing his sight grows closer to the animal.
Jaguar Del Cielo follows field tech Felix Tafoya's journey to better understand and conserve Mexico's apex predator in the El Cielo Biosphere Reserve in Tamaulipas, Mexico. By catching jaguars and fitting them with GPS collars, Felix and his co-workers are able to track the movement of jaguars and g
Therapy session opens memories from five different places and times. Traumatic experiences come back in expressive and suggestive images. Slowly, chaos becomes calmer and changes into peace. It shows new horizons and perspectives which is helpful to talk about the painful past. The film is a story a
Set on the fictional southen island of Nyaha.This is a story told fromthe perspective of the cats living on this island,as they tell of their free,yet slightly sad lives amongst a changing human society. The cast features actual stay cats living on the islands of Okinawa and Yaeyama . 「Nyaha!」 Theme
A short experimental documentary shot at the Long Island Pet Expo in 2023. Take a moment to consider the cat.
Álvaro is a meditation on memory and perseverance in the midst of personal and communal change. As seasons pass, 75-year-old Brooklyn resident Álvaro Brandon traces a quotidian path between the vacant lots of his community in order to feed 40 stray cats. While he navigates changes in h
A young woman becomes increasingly attached to the taxidermied corpse of her housemate's cat. The film stars Will Gao (Heartstopper/Netflix), Josie Charles and features the voice of Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey, Notting Hill). The short was produced by Rasp Films who were BAFTA-nominated for their
Find out how saber-toothed cats grow their "mouth daggers."
Our short film following Pavel Fomenko, Head of the Rare Species Conservation Unit at WWF Russia's Amur Branch, in his conservation work both in the wilderness of the Russian Far East and at the Animal Diseases Diagnostics Centre in Ussuriysk.
In this one-minute digital video, experimental filmmaker Peggy Ahwesh presents a whimsical and tender vignette about her cat Claude, who receives an aura reading after surviving a car accident. The short film humorously engages with metaphysical wellness, while subtly probing the emotional and spiri
A fictional reimagining of the real-life friendship between Pannonica de Koenigswarter, aka The Jazz Baroness, and the famous pianist and composer Thelonious Monk. This new film by the Dutch visual artist is a rare example of experimental narrative dealing with jazz, beautifully freewheeling and mea
Set in the semi-urban wetlands of Howrah, Fishing Cat: The Pride of Bengal is a 45-minute documentary on India's state animal of West Bengal—the elusive Fishing Cat—while exploring its fragile coexistence with local communities. From bustling Kolkata suburbs to quiet marshlands, it captu
Felina, a woman who can morph into a panther, falls in love with a pianist and tries to keep her true nature a secret.
The Cat: Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867) had a love affair with the beautiful mulatto Jeanne Duval for many years. He immortalized the Haitian in drawings and poems, including in the sonnet "The Cat" as part of his poem cycle "The Flowers of Evil". In his cat he meets her likeness. The film provides
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. Experience firsthand the connection between the people of Italy and the furry friends that walk alongside them.
Leonardo da Vinci's famous "Last Supper" mural comes to life, with kitty apostles licking their chops at the tasty meal.
A satire that mirrors Europe's pressing political issues through the daily ups and downs of relationships among neighbouring cats. The film takes place in Catlands, the union of distinct feline territories inhabited by cats of various social statuses. The delicate established status quo is disrupted
The film follows Lil Bub and Bridavsky as they visit other "cat-lebrities" and go to the first Internet Cat Video Film Festival in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Jiro feels sick. His father takes him to see the doctor. Her diagnosis is harmless, but it shakes the boy's identity.
Crazy cat lady or world-class musician? You decide. Dorian Rence smashes our notions of what matters and who counts in 'Feral Love.' A violist with the New York Philharmonic for 40 years, Dorian also cares for a feral cat colony in the tunnels of New York City.
Learn more about the island's last wildcat, the Leopard Cat, and the challenges faced in its conservation.
A short send-up of French avant garde cinema presenting the existential angst of a hungry house cat ('Dietz'). The video is in black & white with French voice-over and English subtitles. @labocine #felino
Nature and domesticity collide and animal instincts rise to the surface, in a dark tale of love and loss. This film's soundtrack features audio from collected interviews, creating a story that is constructed from fragments of real-life broken hearts.
Meet Moshi, a Chenchu tribal who used to hunt small game, but Santosh, our Lead Field Conservationist, recently harnessed Moshi and his community's trust to help monitor and protect fishing cats. Santosh was surprised by the Chenchus' expertise in tracking animals and their knowledge about animal be
"How to Draw a Cat" is a whimsical 3-minute experimental short film by Pola Chapelle that humorously explores the process of drawing a cat. Blending playful visuals with a satirical tone, the film serves as both a parody and homage to artistic instruction, capturing the enigmatic allure of feline su
Dedicated to Guillaume-en-Egypte, the immortal, who continues his adventures in virtual worlds. Thanks to Chris Marker, who sent the music file to add after seeing the rough cut. "Two cats are looking for their third mate. Will they find him? Which one of them is actually the real Guillaume?" Machin
An animated whimsical tale of a lost kitten and his mysterious new ally as they find their way home.
A black panther watches over the sleepers: a small community living on a wasteland near the railroad tracks. Nour, a magical child, lives with them. Two men track him down in the post-industrial landscape, but soon find themselves falling into a deadly sleep under mysterious circumstances.
Some traditional communities in Sumatra, Indonesia, have long considered the tiger a sacred being. These communities have learned to avoid and mitigate human-tiger conflict, developing non-lethal tools while protecting their livestock from predation. Now they work to protect this most majestic and t
Sarah loves cats, but her friends think she's taken it a little too far? What happens when they decide bring some outside help?