The tenth edition of the NY Dog Film Festival takes place on Saturday, October 26 at Symphony Space in Manhattan.

According to festival organizers: “Audiences will enjoy dozens of touching, inspiring short films – narrative, documentary, and animated – from around the world, while contributing directly to the welfare of vulnerable animals by supporting organizations such as Animal Lighthouse Rescue.”

I recently had a chance to sit down with Tracie Hotchner, the festival’s founder and director, for a chat.

In addition to her work on the NY Dog Film Festival, Tracie is also a pet wellness advocate; author of The Dog Bible: Everything Your Dog Wants You to Know; and host of the Dog Talk (and Kitties, Too!) broadcast on Long Island’s WLIW-88.3 FM.

She knows her dogs!

The NY Dog Film Festival got its Start Because of… Cats?!

My first question was “How did the Dog Film Festival come about?”

The surprising answer was… cats!

Tracie told me she’d learned about a very popular installation at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis: “They had gotten an outdoor screen and put a bunch of cat videos up on it, and invited people in the community for free to sit on this grassy hill and look at them.” This was in the age of “I can haz cheeseburger?” and Grumpy Cat when funny cat videos ruled the internet.

Tracie was struck by the success of this exhibition and made the leap to “Okay, so I could have a dog film festival, not videos, but films, meaning something somebody made with an intention, an idea, a theme, a motivation, something they wanted to convey, as opposed to just capturing goofy, silly, ‘what have you’ videos in the moment.”

How Did the Early Days Go?

Tracie’s idea was to put together a compilation of short films about dogs and show them in a theater in New York City. She said it was a real Judy-Garland-Mickey-Rooney-”we-have-a-barn-let’s-put-on-show” effort.

Her first effort was to edit together four two-hour blocks of programming. Her first venue was Symphony Space (the site of this year’s festival as well.) She had to rent it for twelve hours so she scheduled multiple showings throughout the day.

“I put these programs together, and people could either buy a ticket to each one, or some overriding ticket to come to all four of them.”

She crossed her fingers hoping people would show.

And they did.

The original festival was shown in ten theaters. That has grown to more than 75!

What is the NY Dog Film Festival?

First off, it’s not a multi-day film festival like Sundance or Cannes. It’s a series of single day screenings at theaters throughout the country. The original set of four blocks of programming playing out over twelve hours gave way quickly to a single two-hour compilation of short films. This year there are seventeen shorts included in the program. The films were chosen from 64 submissions from fourteen different countries. Click here to see a complete list of titles.

Tracie told me she takes great care at the difficult task of selecting the participating films: “At the beginning of each year when I'm going to look at the submissions, I look at the first few, and I'm like, oh my god this is not working. Oh my god, what am I gonna do? There won't be enough to make even 100 minutes. And then I start to look at them and think ‘Oh my god, that's brilliant. Oh, that's so touching. That's so funny, that's so artful, that's so interesting, that's so philosophical.’”

She says she wants a blend of all those things. Tracie says she knows her audience is very sophisticated and wants to see a variety of stories and formats. “You only have to tell them something once, and don't tell them twice.” That’s why she programs animation, music videos, documentaries, and short form narratives.

How Do You Keep the Audience from Crying?

I told Tracie that ANY time I see a movie about dogs I cry. I can’t help myself. Dogs summon such a wellspring of emotion in me. I asked her how does she keep her viewers from melting into puddles of blubbery, sobby, mushy, crybaby tears.

Her answer? She doesn’t!

Her audience members “are usually crying tears of joy, because somebody has touched them so much, or a dog has been so enchanting. In fact, one time in San Francisco, people were coming out of the theater and someone said to me, ‘You should get Kleenex to be your sponsor. You should totally just give everybody Kleenex.’”

She added: “Obviously, I'm not gonna put a movie in in which something really bad happens to a dog. They're all happy endings.”

What Makes the Tenth Edition of the NY Dog Film Festival Special?

To close I asked Tracie what's special about this year’s festival.

She replied that the fact that it is still around and going strong in its tenth year is a testament to people’s desire to have communal experiences. She said that even though people don’t go out to movie theaters very much these days, they still come to the festival, in person, in New York City.

“The Festival exists because of their passion for dogs and for celebrating them and without their continued presence it could not have thrived this long. And filmmakers from around the world look to me to show their passionately made movies to other dog lovers. I consider it an honor to be able to connect all these people devoted to their pooches.”

The Who, Why, What, Where, and When

The Tenth Annual NY Dog Film Festival
Sunday, October 26th
2:00 pm

Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater at Symphony Space
2537 Broadway at 95th Street NYC

Tickets on sale now.

50% of proceeds benefit Animal Lighthouse Rescue whose mission is to bring adoptable dogs and cats to New York from Puerto Rico.

The VIP Pooch & Pussy Cat Party
Saturday, October 25th
2:00 – 4:00 pm

Prohibition
503 Columbus Avenue

Join Tracie and other Very Important Pet Parents for an afternoon of fun at Prohibition, the Upper West Side’s iconic speakeasy. Celebrating the 10th Anniversary of the NY Dog Film Festival and 8th Annual NY Cat Film Festival.

Buy tickets here.

10th Annual NY Dog Film Festival