"Do some animals’ lives matter more than others? What is the proper way to care for an animal - and who gets to decide? How do issues of class and race play out over feral cats? These questions motivated me to direct Cat City.

As a Chicagoan since 2002, I’m enamored with the city’s landscapes and subcultures. I’ve contributed to many projects documenting Chicago while advocating for change - from my 2006 student film You Are Here introducing University of Chicago undergraduates to the legacy of structural racism on the southside; my award-winning 2010 film Scrappers about the impact of the recession on scrap metal collectors and their families; PBS Chicago/WTTW’s inaugural web series Central Standard about disparities in Chicagoland public education, and my Emmy-nominated 2019 film Stateville Calling exploring parole reform in Illinois.

I practice traditions that emerged in the mid-twentieth century - cinematic social inquiry, as articulated by Gordon Quinn and others in Chicago, and direct cinema and cinema vérité, all of which create knowledge through novel deployments of cinematic grammar to dramatize reality, with a deep concern for how the camera and the totality of a film impacts communities immediately and in the long term. Cat City alternates between cats, birds, rats and policy experts, bridging divided neighborhoods and communities, short-circuiting opposing worldviews. To negotiate the impossible task of representation, the film employs the strategies of a matrix story structure, without heroes, villains or calls to action, and constructs appeal within the nature, vignette and education genres.

Chicago’s alleys are an obsession for me. Within the city’s infinite street grid, they embody an unexpected symmetry made up of garages and trash anchored by a classical vanishing point, vitalized by the detritus and wildlife of an under-resourced yet over-consuming community. Our collective desire to see this hidden space through new eyes - as a cat, a bird, an animal activist, or a conservationist, drives Cat City.

Cat City is an experiment. The film is about nature, but takes the city as its setting. It is character-driven, yet each scene brings new faces, who we meet where they are at, without the pretense of having to change or grow. Cuteness and conflict propel the story, however the movie appeals foremost to a desire to learn. The subject may seem trivial - what to do about feral cats; yet the lessons about how science, emotion, race and class impact policy and practice are applicable to any issue. Like most true experiments, the project should fail, but it somehow holds together, like an accidental recipe that stumbles upon a new flavor. The success is in no small part due to the insights and diligence of my collaborators - especially researchers and producers Rebecca Burns, Kyra Mitchell and Sophia Rhee, composers Jamaal Crowder and Hannah Kolak, and editors Michael del Rosario, Kerry Stevens and Agustin Donoso.

I look forward to sharing the film for years to come, to support animal activists, conservationists, and community members in finding common ground and creating better policy.
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