Cat skinning film in Toronto - Is this for real?

[PussyCow]

My sister emailed me one of those petition emails regarding a cat skinning film being shown at the Toronto film festival. I find a couple articles about it ABCnews.com and ctv.ca.
Can anyone out there confirm if this is fake? It seems so unreal that a reputable flim festival would allow the showing of such a film.

[RickJay]

The film is real. The producers were convicted of a crime for it.

However, if I recall correctly, the film being shown at the Toronto Film Festival is NOT the cat-skinning film. It’s a film ABOUT the incident and the media uproar that surrounded it.

[Kimstu]

Triple ick. I have to ask, though: according to the film, is there really more than one way to do it?

[PussyCow]

Update:

[N]RickJay** is right. It is about skinning a cat, but does not actually show skinning the cat. It was a form of protest (I don’t think that’s the right word) against eating animals.
From this page]page

Jesse Power, ex-vegetarian, was an art student when he conceived a new project. In May 2001, he enlisted two friends, Anthony Wennekers and Matthew Kaczorowski, to help him kill a cat. The intention was to make a video that protested the unthinking consumption of factory-slaughtered animals by killing, cooking and eating a cherished domestic pet - a feline posthumously named Kensington by animal-rights activists. Alerted by an outraged roommate, the police found the skinned and decapitated cat in the beer fridge. Kaczorowski fled and was apprehended in Vancouver two years later. All three eventually pleaded guilty to animal cruelty and mischief charges.

[BubbaDog]

I was going to ask the question,“It’s against the law to skin a cat?”

Thank I followed the link and realized that they had skinned a live cat.

Just another case of horrible people calling themselves “artists”.

[PussyCow]

Oh fer chrissake
here

[paperbackwriter]

Casuistry is a philosophical method of inquiry aimed at finding the “correct” ethical response based on case-by-case reasoning. It carries a heavily negative connotation, however, due to circumstances of how it was used. The Jesuist colleges taught this method. Critics charged that it was just a method of using complex reasoning to arrive at pre-determined results.

The film being shown at the Toronto Film Festival does not glorify or excuse the animal abuse, nor is it really about the initial crimes. The film is about the three men already mentioned, and how they attempted to self-justify an action that most people recoil in horror at.

[Larry_Mudd]

Oh, for Christ’s sake indeed.

Ignorance sparks fury over cat killer film.

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. […]

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.

The Globe & Mail ran a few informative stories on this a while back, but they’re only available to subscribers now.

@The Globe & Mail

The film investigates an animal-cruelty case in which art student Jesse Power and two friends torture and kill a cat to protest the unthinking consumption of factory-slaughtered animals. The trio eventually pleaded guilty to animal cruelty and mischief charges for the May 2001 incident.

In his statement, Tohill said he would not recommend the film to anyone, except politicians who should be aware of the need for stronger legislation to deal with animal cruelty. “The film is difficult to watch,” said [Pat Tohill of the World Society for the Protection of Animals], who accepted an invitation from the festival to view Casuistry. But he said even with some other images of animal cruelty in the film, it does not condone the torture and killing of the young cat in question.

Upshot: no one who’s seen the film can reasonably argue that its an apology for the cat-killers.

[PussyCow]

@Larry Mudd

Upshot: no one who’s seen the film can reasonably argue that its an apology for the cat-killers.

Indeed. It seems the film is more aimed at making a mockery of the morons who did this cat-atrocity. It seems it would be better for people who love animals and want to defend them to promote seeing the film instead of signing a stupid email petition to stop it.