The Strange Little Cat & Sun Song

February 8, 2015 · Knoxville Museum of Art · 2:00 p.m.

Ramon Zürcher’s feature-length debut, The Strange Little Cat is set almost entirely in a Berlin apartment, where an extended family has gathered to prepare and enjoy a meal together. The main character – if it’s fair to call her that – is the mother of the family who is hosting the party. She’s middle-aged, attractive, and by turns delighted by and indifferent to her family, including her husband, their two older children who have returned home for the occasion, and a young daughter. Throughout the course of their day, various members of the family tell deeply felt stories – reveries, really – that fall on deaf ears, and it becomes increasingly obvious that there is an unacknowledged tension between them.

Since its premiere at the Berlin International Film Festival in February 2013, The Strange Little Cat has done a tour of more than two dozen of the world’s most prestigious fests, including Cannes, Toronto, Vienna and AFI FEST. It’s rare to find a young filmmaker with such a distinct, mature voice, and even rarer to stumble upon a film that so generously rewards post-screening discussions and multiple viewings. It’s a small gem, a film that tells a familiar story in a genuinely new way.

Sun Song

After a screening of Sun Song in Rotterdam last year, Joel Wanek talked a bit about the Alabama-born jazz musician Sun Ra, who claimed that he must have been born on another planet – how else to explain the treatment he and other African Americans received here on earth? Sun Song is a kind of naturalistic sci-fi film that imagines a journey back home to some forgotten, more perfect world. Wanek, a recent graduate of Duke University’s Experimental and Documentary Arts program, shot Sun Song over six months during daily rides on public buses. He’d shoot in the morning on the east-bound route and in the evenings while headed west, so that the bus was always driving directly into the light. The film begins in the dark, early morning hours and ends awash in a warm glow. It is, quite simply, the most beautiful digital film I’ve yet seen.