IDA has learned that the Toronto Film Festival plans to screen "Casuistry: The Art of Killing a Cat" during their "Real to Real" program. This film glorifies atrocities committed by three youths in 2001 when they videotaped themselves skinning alive a domestic cat and called it art. Several of the police who watched the videotapes had to stop watching; some of them cried.

The three youths were all given slaps on the wrist and are now out on the street today capable of committing further atrocities.

Below please find the column that appeared in the Toronto Sun, (also available at http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/Columnists/Toronto/Mike_Strobel/2004/08/28/605479.html).

Please write to Toronto Film Festival Officials and let them know that you are disgusted. Tell them you are boycotting the festival if this film is not pulled.

Contact:
Lynnette Gryseels, Press Officer
Michele Maheux, Managing Director
Toronto Film Festival
E-mail: lgryseels@torfilmfest.ca; tiffg@torfilmfest.ca; proffice@torfilmfest.ca; customerservice@torfilmfest.ca
Tel.: (416) 934-3200
Fax: (416) 581-0214

Sample letter:

To the organizers of the Toronto International Film Festival:

I was horrified to learn that Linda Feesey's film, “Casuistry: The Art of Killing a Cat,” is scheduled as part of the Toronto Film Festival. As you likely know, the film discusses the notorious case of 2001 in which Jesse Power, Anthony Wennekers, and Matt Kaczorowski videotaped themselves torturing a cat.

We would welcome efforts to raise awareness about this act of cruelty. However, you may not be aware that the producer, Linda Feesey, is an associate of the cat torturers. (For example, her 2002 film, Mr. Kafka's Holiday, starred Jesse Power's friend Jubal Brown, who was outspoken in his support of Power during the cat video case.) Casuistry is another opportunity for Power and his friends to defend their horrendous actions. According to the review in the Toronto Sun, the film features many apologists for the cat torturers. The killers show no remorse for their crime.

By including this film in the Festival, you are not only condoning, but encouraging Jesse Power and his ilk in their actions of extreme, premeditated, and illegal cruelty to animals. We urge you to remove this film from your program.
Please let me know as soon as possible what action you will take.

Thank you for your consideration.
Sincerely,
_______

Monday, August 30, 2004
COLUMNIST
Sat, August 28, 2004
It gets even loopier

By MIKE STROBEL -- For the Toronto Sun

Casuistry: (1) The act of deciding questions of right from wrong. (2) Clever but false reasoning.

And here we thought the Kensington cat snuff film was evil, pure and simple.

That we were right to revile the three goofs who made it and be repulsed by their work. That nothing, nothing, could justify it. Now along comes Casuistry: The Art of Killing a Cat. It premieres at the Toronto Film Festival Sept. 14. The producer gave me a tape, since I wrote about the case.

You need not be a cat-lover to remember: Jesse Power, Anthony Wennekers and Matt Kaczorowski, all 20-ish, made a snuff film one Friday night in
2001.

For 17 minutes, they tormented, tortured, and oh, so, slowly, killed a gentle, striped female cat in a Kensington house. The unlucky pet was later found skinned in a beer fridge. It was art, said Jesse Power, the lead goof.

A few of Toronto's loopier artistes defended them, but hardly anyone else did. I mean, this was the Bernardo/Homolka of animal cruelty cases.

Now, at last, the Three Stooges have their say. Casuistry: The Art of Killing a Cat is produced by Linda Feesey and directed by Zev Asher. She made Sex and Cerebral Palsy. He made What About Me: The Rise of the Nihilist Spasm Band. They are not Disney.

To set the mood, they open Casuistry with scenes from a 1980 "performance art" flick, in which two cats are disembowelled and worn as hats. Istvan Kantor filmed that gem. He has since won a Governor General's Award. But Jesse Power is the star of Casuistry. (It's his special word, right before "cat" in the dictionary.) He's even the soundtrack, yowling his Anti-Meat Eating Song. He speaks first in shadow, then, as he warms to the topic, in full view.

His bangs dangle sexily. His eyes toy with the camera. "Man, am I charismatic," they say. "And misunderstood." And a whiner. The cops "went all righteous on me." Or, "I never got to eat the cat, but a lot of other people are feasting off of this cat."

Or, things got gory because he and his pals were "disorganized" and one of them gave him a dull razor. Plus they were dozy on drugs. And, anyway, "everything takes a long time to die, no matter what it is." He got 90 days, on weekends. He blames the papers, and society, and the young woman who called the cops (in hopes of a reward, says our Jesse).

Pal Wennekers even manages to blame cats, "just a smarter version of rats, an artifact of human culture." Sometimes, bull-fights or squealing swine flash across Casuistry. Remember, Power's "art video" was to show the "hypocrisy" of pets in a world of abattoirs. And, step right up, see Jesse Power chop off a runt chicken's head. See him cuddle a rotting pig, play puppet with a baby orangutan's corpse. There is none of the Kensington tape.

The filmmakers couldn't get their hands on it. They also couldn't find any backers, even in usually fertile arts councils and grant offices. Total budget was, oh, $500. Apologists were a dime a dozen, though.
A friend of Matt's tells us how the guy is a talented writer and once asked for a teddy bear. "Artists" say things like: "Young men, as they're growing up and learning how things work, they always kill something. It's part of growing and developing as a young person." Det. John Margetson, the humane society and the like, bring some balance and sense, thank goodness. "I cannot condone, or condemn, what (Power and Co.) did," says Zev Asher, down the line from Montreal. "I think it was a misguided adventure, that they were inebriated and did something sick and stupid. "I think Jesse is an artist. I don't think this was art at all, though I understand what he was trying to do." I dunno. You should see those 17 minutes, Mr. Asher. I have. So when Jesse Power smirks that maybe he'll be "torn apart by a cougar" when he goes camping...it's hard not to root for the cougar.