Kedi starts with Barış Manço’s song. This Manço song, which expresses his site to his donkey friend, is actually a symbol of the deterioration of relations and migration from village to town. We begin by recalling the communication factors that determine the dynamics of the city, and we follow the cats.
Ceyda Torun considers this documentary as a whole of voices, and beings integrating into the city. These beings are undoubtedly the leading cats of the film. They call Istanbul a city with “seven hills”. Built on seven hills, this city has different voices from beyond history. These voices are hidden on the sidewalk, on the streets, on the houses, and on the walls of those houses.
The fact that a city is still alive depends on the fact that its streets are still talking. Over the years, Istanbul’s voices have been destroyed. We have reached a dimension where we can’t see the voices coming from the streets, the history of the walls. The streets, where the people of the city were looking for old friends, turned into a crowd of people following the ghosts of the streets.
The cat is following a path that follows these crowds of people. This movie does that by running around chasing cats. Because the living things that record the history and life of the city are actually the cats of Istanbul. The traces of cats we followed from Beyoğlu to Cihangir, and the view of the Bosphorus that we saw when we were going after fish on the beaches, tells us the story of the city from the language of cats.
Every cat in the documentary has a different characteristic. Some cranky, some called psychopathic, some shy… each of whom has taken certain habits from the people of the city on seven hills. And the trail of these habits is re-announced all over the city. It reminds the city of memories, actually street cats.
The conversations with people who take care of them, the scenes where their lives are told, the moments that we share with the lives of cats. Always have a director who reflects the camera from the cat’s point of view. The camera is not behind them. Cats direct the camera to the point of view. Because at the point where they look, the heart of the city beats.
Ceyda Torun’s directing style is the reflection of this view on the cinema. The residents of the city, cats, combine their own stories and the language of the city with the language of documentary cinema to reveal the memories of the disappearance in the streets of Istanbul.
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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngCSm9F0sjs&w=560&h=315]
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