THE CATS OF GOKOGU SHRINE

Feline Sanctuary Divides a Local Community

Venue(s): Theater Image Forum
October 19 (Sat)-November 15 (Fri): 18:30
Language: In Japanese with English subtitles
Official website: gokogu-cats.jp/
Theater website: www.imageforum.co.jp/theatre/
Theater website: www.imageforum.co.jp/theatre/movies/7724/
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHeHknTw-cc&ab_channel=Cinemarche
Tariff: General: ￥1,900 / Students and seniors: ￥1,400 / High school/junior high school students or under and members: ￥1,300.
Advance tickets: ¥1,500 at the theater
Talk event: Visit theater website for details.

Title: 五香宮の猫 (Gokogu no Neko)
Director: Kazuhiro Soda (想田和弘)
Duration: 119 min

You don’t have to be a cat lover to add this one to your Must-See list. While continuing to make the international film festival rounds with the tenth title in his Observational Film series, acclaimed documentary director Kazuhiro Soda is making sure international audiences based in Japan also get a chance to appreciate The Cats of Gokogu, which is screening with subtitles from October 19.

In the film, Soda turns the lens on his adopted home, Ushimado, and the many abandoned and stray cats who provide both pleasure and pain to the town’s human residents. In the small fishing village located on the Seto Inland Sea, the fraying relationship between humans and nature, as well as the symbiotic relationship between people and felines, is brought into stark relief.

While there has long been local support for the felines who have made the ancient Gokogu Shrine their haven, this has gradually changed. The explosion of attention from social media has brought increased tourism to the "Cat Shrine," and thus created even greater conflicts between those who feed the roaming strays, clean the poop and help cage them for neutering, and those who complain that they are a dirty and costly burden on the community.

As ever, Soda's plain-spoken approach plumbs hidden depths. With gentle humor and piercing insights, The Cats of Gokogu Shrine paints a moving portrait of a vanishing way of life. The filmmaker has taken audiences behind the scenes of election campaigns (Campaign, Campaign 2), mental institutions (Mental, Zero), experimental theaters (Theatre 1, 2), seafood processing plants (Oyster Factory), even America's largest football stadium (The Big House) to explore themes confronting modern society everywhere. With this film, he looks at aging, xenophobia, loss of local traditions and the fracturing of tight-knit communities. And cats, of course.

As Soda notes, "When I observe them, I am so amazed that they are acting according to nature, the natural cycle of this planet. Street cats are part of nature. That is why they are not controllable. And that's why we fear them… We didn't [used to] think we could control everything in this world. But nowadays, human beings, we think of ourselves as Almighty, like we are the rulers of the world." And in Gokogu's minor struggle for control of the uncontrollable, the world's woes are mirrored.

Theater Image Forum