Original publication date: 30 August 2012
Renowned Park film director and proud University of West Terrier alumnus, Douglas Cheetah, is hard at work on a new documentary that he says will be ready for release in time for the 2013 Park Interspecial Film Festival (PIFF).
Best known for his controversial 2007 (25 AZ) film, Black Cats Can’t Jump, Cheetah has turned his attention to the interspecial family which, he says, can be found in all parts of the world.
“We think of it [the interspecial family] as existing solely outside The Park and, always, with Humans as part of the mix,” he says. “But that isn’t true at all. I found interspecial families everywhere, including in The Park. And, in many cases, it was because a conscious choice had been made, rather than as a result of some kind of hardship.”
Most interspecial families, he says, suffer from misunderstanding and there is a deep prejudice against them because they are associated with enforced domestication.
“Of course, that is the foundation of many of these families outside The Park,” Cheetah says. “But not all. And among the families I studied, there were several that had no Human members. Some had made the choice to open their homes and families to other species without any prompting; some had done so as a response to some familial or environmental disaster. Either way, these families are not what we in The Park tend to think they are. A great many of them are happy and loving groups who support each other and who have had success in their lives. They are valuable to each other and to the wider world. I think their story is well worth telling,” he says.
