An image from Heidi Kumao’s short film “35 Days,” which will be shown at The New Jersey International Film Festival.
In June and July 2020, Heidi Kumao’s orange tabby cat Ruben went missing for 35 days. Kumao scoured her Ann Arbor, Michigan, neighborhood, and put up “lost cat” flyers. After 42 voice messages, 28 misidentified cats, 54 hours of knocking on doors and 150 flyers, Ruben was finally found.
Using the actual phone messages, stop motion animation (created frame-by-frame with fabric and paper cutouts, thread and wool) and a soundtrack of quirky, delicately constructed music from Frank Pahl’s 2011 album Music for Architecture, Kumao evokes the experience in a short film, “35 Days,” that will be shown at the 31st annual New Jersey International Film Festival in New Brunswick, May 30, and also be available online. You can watch the trailer below.
An image from “35 Days.”
The subtext of the movie, of course, is that the action is happening in the summer of 2020 — the height of the pandemic. We hear, in the saved voice messages, people trying to reach out and make a connection when that wasn’t necessarily an easy thing for anyone to do.
“I was so surprised and moved by the number of calls, but also the messages from people who just wanted to express their concern and sympathy for me and my cat,” Kumao has said. “I knew I wanted to highlight some of these in the film because they illuminate basic human kindness that might seem rare these days.”
One woman who calls can’t remember her own phone number. Another caller, who has a shaky voice and is illustrated by just parts of her face — eyes, nose, mouth and a wild pile of messy hair — calls repeatedly, and when Kumao visits her home, she discovers that the woman has mistaken a potted plant in her backyard for the cat.
Kumao — a professor at the School of Art & Design at the University of Michigan — gets to know where all the orange cats in the neighborhood live, and creates a map for us.
Ruben is shown as Kumao imagines him: The film is filled with gorgeous images of him sitting on the tops of houses, riding in cars, and confidently exploring the neighborhood, as if surveying territory he owns.
Kumao breaks from animation only once, to show us a brief video of Ruben — found three miles away, safe and sound — at the end of the film.
“35 Days” is part of The New Jersey International Film Festival’s “Shorts Program #1,” which will screen at Voorhees Hall at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, May 30 at 5 p.m., and also be available online all day May 30. Visit njfilmfest.com.
For more on the film, visit heidikumao.net/portfolio-items/35-days.
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