Walter Potter: The Man Who Married Kittens is a short doc written and directed by Ronni Thomas, who’s the filmmaker-in-residence at Brooklyn’s Morbid Anatomy Museum. It explores the macabre yet oddly adorable work of Victorian England taxidermist Walter Potter. DO WANT.
Here’s a more detailed description from the Morbid Anatomy site:
This film takes a short documentary look at one of Victorian England’s most enigmatic and quirky characters, self taught taxidermist Walter Potter, still famous today for his epic anthropomorphic taxidermy tableaux, in which he posed stuffed kittens, birds, squirrels and and rabbits into such scenes as kitten weddings and the rabbit schoolhouses. Potter displayed his creations in his own museum in rural England where it attracted enthusiastic visitors for over a hundred years until the collection’s unfortunate separation in 2003. While largely about the man and his creations, the film also takes a look at the obsessive nature of collecting, as well as the controversial history of stuffing dead animals.
The 20-minute film is an official selection of April’s Tribeca Film Festival; here’s hoping it’ll be available for online viewing for the Victoriana/kitten/taxidermy-fascinated masses soon, too.
