Cat Swallows Parakeet and Speaks!

Vancouver filmmaker Ileana Pietrobruno’s Cat Swallows Parakeet follows the progress of Scheherazade and Kore, two hospitalized young women who take up storytelling as a means of survival. Inspired by headlines in tabloid magazines, the young women enact an endless narrative, reminiscent of One Thousand and One Nights (aka Arabian Nights), to fend off death: for Scheherazade, at the hands of the doctor’s knife, and for Kore, the self-annihilation of an eating disorder. Pietrobruno depended heavily on the art direction of Bo Myers and Athena Wong to bring this visually-stunning film — about life in death and death in life— to life in the abandoned Riverview Hospital in Coquitlam. The film, says Pietrobruno, is “about celebrating entropy, decay and death, and gaining strength through problems and ugliness.” “One of the most drop-dead gorgeous movies ever made in Vancouver ... A dizzyingly ambitious experimental drama ... The apocalyptic production design is breathtaking ... Pietrobruno is a talented filmmaker of decidedly distinctive vision” (Jim Sinclair, The Cinematheque). Colour and B&W, 16mm. 75 mins.