Online Premiere: Sofia Bohdanowicz’s The Hardest Working Cat in Showbiz
In work like her narrative feature MS Slavic 7 (titled after a library call number) and nonfiction short Veslemoy’s Song, Toronto-based filmmaker Sofia Bohdanowicz has dived into archives, examining their possibilities as a path to various revelations and/or frustrations. Both are encountered in this short film, in which Bohdanowicz adapts Dan Sallitt’s essay “The Hardest Work Cat in Show Biz,” expanding the text with illustrations of feline actor Orangey in action across his career. It begins with Sallitt and his cat Jasper at home before diving into the main line of argument, connecting many dots along the way while finding an entirely different direction for Bohdanowicz’s formidable research skills.