This second book in the Routledge Docalogue series continues to model a new form for the discussion of documentary film, focusing on a new film and a different set of critical questions.
Kedi (2016) is the first feature documentary by Turkish-American filmmaker Ceyda Torun. The film provides a window into the everyday lives of Istanbul street cats; their itinerant meanderings present a non-human perspective on this ever-changing, ancient city while at the same time exploring the meaningful impact these cats have on the humans they encounter. Kedi: A Docalogue brings together a diversity of perspectives on this film. By combining five distinct critical approaches to a single documentary, this book acts both as an intensive scholarly treatment and as a guide for how to analyze, theorize, and contextualize a documentary.
Together, the essays in this book touch upon key topics in documentary studies, including animal studies, eco-documentaries, sound studies, and media industry studies, making them essential reading for scholars interested in contemporary documentary. They also provide useful case studies for teaching documentary film in courses on Contemporary Cinema, Cultural Studies, and Media Industries.
Introduction: Kedi in context
Kristen Fuhs
Chapter 1: From Cat to Clowder: Kedi in the Anthropocene
Benjamin Schultz-Figueroa
Chapter 2: Tracking Cats and Voicing Dogs: Locating Street Animals in Kedi and Taskafa: Stories of the Street
Yiman Wang
Chapter 3: Foreign and Familiar: Kedi and the Musicality of Istanbul
Paul N. Reinsch
Chapter 4: Kedi Between the Local and the National
Melis Behlil
Chapter 5: Kedi: Crossover Documentary as Popular Art Cinema
Chris Cagle
Epilogue: A conversation with Kedi’s director, Ceyda Torun
Kristen Fuhs and Ceyda Torun
Biography
Jaimie Baron is Associate Professor of Film Studies at the University of Alberta. She is author of two books, The Archive Effect: Found Footage and the Audiovisual Experience of History (Routledge, 2014) and Reuse, Misuse, Abuse: The Ethics of Audiovisual Appropriation in the Digital Era (2020), and numerous journal articles and book chapters. She is also the director of the Festival of Inappropriation, a yearly international festival of short experimental found footage films and videos.
Kristen Fuhs is Associate Professor of Media Studies in the Department of Communication at Woodbury University. She writes about documentary film, the American criminal justice system, and contemporary celebrity, and her work has appeared in journals such as Cultural Studies; the Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television; and the Journal of Sport & Social Issues.
