This is terrible. On one hand how can they promote the killing of cats and
on the other if they show the film it might get people involved in wanting
to put a stop to animal abuse. It's a catch-22 situation. It's horrible what
the humans involved did to this cat and they should die the same way but
maybe if the video is shown people will know how serious the animal cruelty
issue is and that more laws should be put into place to protect the animals
instead of allowing a lot of these people who abuse them to get off with
only a slap on the wrist. The laws also need to be changed to make animal
cruelty a more severe offense. A zero tolerance law would be a nice idea.
This way the criminals know they can't plea it down to a lesser charge and
also make the sentence more severe.

Kaeli,

I read the FAQ and that was enough. This sort of act is
one of the few things in life that makes me touch the brink of losing
control of my actions. Happily, crazier people than me know about this and
will find out more about it as time goes on. We have not heard the end of
these three men, or what repercussions they will face due to what they have
done.

What worries me: the usual percentage of sociopaths who will see this and
think, "cool idea." They are out there, and their will be copycat killings,
pardon the pun.

What worries me more: the people who derive some sort of pleasure from this
type of horrow who DON'T go public with it. In my heart I know they are out
there.

My only consolation: I honestly believe that there is justice for those who
dare to harm helpless dependent creatures, human or otherwise. I've seen it
happen, and I can feel it moving toward the perpetrators of the torture and
murder of Kensington at this minute, crazy as that sounds. I really mean it,
and I don't think I am rationalizing.

I cannot get this thing out of my mind. It is helping me to know more about
the men who did this.

http://www.findmatt.org/kaczorowski.htm

====================================================

Ignorance sparks fury over cat killer film
See the film before passing judgment

GEOFF PEVERE
MOVIE CRITIC for The Toronto Star

As a movie critic for this newspaper, I make every effort to adhere to what
I hold to be a basic journalistic principle: I see the movies before I
criticize them. In the past couple of weeks, for example, I have spent
approximately 60 hours watching movies scheduled for this year's Toronto
International Film Festival.

Call me old-fashioned but I believe my credibility depends on me having
actual first-hand experience of what I'm talking about. Any less, I would
fully expect to be fired.

One of the film fest movies I screened is called Casuistry: The Art Of
Killing A Cat. It's a documentary about the notorious 2001 "cat-killing
video" made in Toronto by three men who tortured a cat to death on video and
passed it off as art. Because of its controversial subject, animal-rights
activists in Toronto want the new documentary to be pulled from the
festival.

Quite simply and unequivocally, director Zev Asher's movie does not endorse
the actions of the would-be "artists." If anything, it sacrifices sensation
for balance. It probes not just what happened and the ensuing criminal
trial, but the alleged justifications for its occurrence. How could they do
it? This is what any reasonable person would ask themselves, and this is
what the movie asks as well. Moreover, it is the process of answering this
that the title refers to.

Interestingly, no one attacking the film seems so far to have bothered to
look up the meaning of "casuistry." Had they, the controversy might have
been deservedly nipped in its skinny little bud. According to my dictionary,
casuistry means "subtle but specious reasoning intended to rationalize or
mislead." After opening with images from an infamous art video made in the
1980s by the renowned provocateur Istvan Kantor, in which dead cats are
mutilated and used as props like hats, Casuistry offers a fairly steady,
down-the-middle account of what happened in the Toronto incident.

The participants in the act are interviewed, and they make fairly weak and
unconvincing arguments for the artistic imperative behind what they did. The
cop who arrested them is interviewed, and he makes it clear he thinks the
three men are creeps. Many animal-rights spokespeople are interviewed, and
they are predictably passionate, angry and ? in some cases ? outright
vengeful.

Then there are the images of cats. Asher's movie is full of images of cats:
cats walking, cats sleeping, cats staring with cat-like inscrutability right
at the camera. They punctuate the proceedings like a silent chorus, a
conscience.

In the context of the film, their presence ensures the death of the cat,
posthumously named Kensington, never becomes a mere issue or abstraction.
They remind you that we're talking about a creature that lived, suffered
horribly and died. Because of this, to consider the film as an endorsement
of what the cat-killers did is absurd.

And the only way you could possibly come to that conclusion is by not having
seen the movie.

Nevertheless, that is precisely the conclusion being widely and loudly
arrived at. Just yesterday, on this newspaper's op-ed page, an article
appeared under the headline, "Festival should pull plug on cat-killing
movie." Authored by Rondi Adamson, the piece arrived at a number of bluntly
expressed, indignantly held opinions about Casuistry ? for instance, that it
was about "sickos" the author hoped were undergoing "hours and hours of
therapy" and the film ought to be pulled from the festival's lineup ?
despite one minor, niggling breach of journalistic methodology: Rondi
Adamson has not seen the movie.

But that's okay. In fact, she's proud she hasn't. "I don't intend to," she
wrote. "I can make a judgment. I am willing to make a judgment right now and
stand by it.

"The movie is sick and I hope no one goes to see it."

For this, on my back pages, I would expect to be shown the door.

Meanwhile, the movie has become this week's hot-button, fur-flying
sensation. In the same edition of our paper containing Adamson's
sight-unseen condemnation of Casuistry, a reader's letter blasted the
festival's "heart-sickening decision to show the cat torture video;" and
under the "Darts and Laurels" on the opposite page, TIFF was darted "for
nuttiness: organizers are using `freedom of expression' as an excuse to
screen Casuistry: The Art Of Killing A Cat, a film about the videotaped
torture of a stray Toronto cat."

The documentary is being ranted about over talk radio airwaves, shouted over
on local TV shows, and covered in all the daily newspapers. Yesterday, the
Globe and Mail reported the festival programmer who selected the film, Sean
Farnel, had received a death threat at his home. The anonymous caller, a
woman, threatened to "skin him alive" and "shove knives in his eyes."

Apart from sheer, belligerent hysteria, the thread connecting all these
eruptions is garden-variety ignorance. No one who has commented on the movie
has seen it.

I have. That's why I'm shocked. But not by the "cat torture video," which ?
despite what the letter-reader and so many others have claimed ? does not
include footage showing the terrible death of Kensington the cat. (It shows
a printed transcript of the events in the video, but not the event itself.)
I'm shocked that so many people can get access to our local media outlets
without having seen the film. I'm shocked that so much blatantly incorrect
and easily checked information about the documentary has been printed as
fact. And I'm shocked that this newspaper would let those unfounded and
passionately biased opinions prevail on its pages.

And what are we to think when a newspaper throws darts at a film festival
for defending its programming selections on the basis of freedom of
expression?

I'm also shocked that this kind of unfounded, bullying and ignorant hysteria
is becoming so common.

I've already experienced it twice this year: once when readers assailed me
on the opening day of The Passion Of The Christ without having seen it, and
again when readers attacked me for writing about Michael Moore's Fahrenheit
9/11 after its premiere in Cannes, which was before anyone in this continent
had seen it.

There is much to be embarrassed about in this sorry affair, and I sincerely
hope it blows by with the furball speed that most irrational and
sensationalist news-spasms do.

Meanwhile, I merely ask that someone do me the courtesy of enlightening me
if I'm wrong about the way I'm doing my job. Gosh knows, if I can stop
actually seeing movies and still have opinions, get prominent play on op-ed
pages and still draw a paycheque for being a movie critic, I'm all for it.

It will give me a lot more time to spend at home with my dogs.