Director-turned-producer Ulla Kojootti’s engaging collage film, 32 Short Films About Zoocracy, has been selected to open the 10th annual Park Interspecial Film Festival (PIFF) on October 1.
PIFF Communications President Leola Ocelot made the announcement at a brief press conference this morning.
“We screened the film about a month ago and thought it would be perfect for the opening,” Ocelot said.
“It is a fine celebration of our struggle to establish and maintain Animal self-rule and it fits nicely with our own celebration of a decade of showcasing the work of Park filmmakers.”
The film is an unusual project for Kojootti, who is better known as a “lone Wolf” in the industry than as a collaborator. Her best known films, such as Coexistence, were written, directed and produced by her with no assistance from any other Animal.
Even so, Kojootti said in an interview recently, she was drawn to the subject “because I had been thinking about our life here in The Park and I wanted to know what others thought about it.”
She invited The Park’s film community to a discussion and, she says, “the idea began there.”
Kojootti invited 32 directors (one for each year of zoocracy in The Park) to make a short film about the subject either from their personal point of view or from that of their species. The result is what those who have seen it call a “brilliant, maddening, engaging, thought-provoking” film.
Ironically, Kojootti produced the work but did not direct any of the films. She has no regrets, though.
“Maybe we’ll do it again in a few years,” she says. “Then I will definitely save one [film] for myself.”
