Rukus movie out now: Furries, memories and mysteries (with a director Q&A).

by Patch O'Furr

Memphis film maker Brett Hanover shares Rukus free to the public. Don’t miss the full interview with him.

8 years in the making, this indie feature film makes an ambitious hybrid of fiction and documentary. It’s out today, October 10th, at Vimeo and www.rukusmovie.com, and then at NoBudge on October 17th. Put on a kigu, bring a friend or a pet, and share it to furry fans and indie movie lovers to support it.

The person named Rukus was a furry artist who committed suicide, but left many memories and mysteries. His friendship with Brett Hanover inspired the movie. This fandom-sourced labor of love has been to film festivals and furry conventions across the USA and Europe. It was selected for South by Southwest (SXSW), where mainstream cinemaphiles praised this unique flight of imagination.

Previously on Dogpatch Press:

Tomorrow: Brett Hanover talks about making the movie. Here’s a snip. (Full one here).

(Brett:) “…Another thing that transformed over the life of the project was my own relationship with furry. Like a lot of people, I started out with an excuse – “Oh, I’m just here because I’m working on this project…” I think that’s one reason I became so fascinated by Rukus as a teenager – documentary filmmaking gave me a justification to explore the fandom vicariously through him.

Of course, eventually, you find yourself tripping at a convention, cuddling a stranger while he shows you mesmerizing illustrations of neon paws on his phone, and you realize you’ve crossed the event horizon… Still, because of how I initially approached the fandom, there’s a part of me that will always feel a little like an outsider.

That piece of me was useful, I think, because I stayed hyper-aware of how I was representing the community. There’s better representation now, but when I found the fandom in 2005, the media had never touched it without fucking up.

In an earlier email, I called furry a “collective art project,” and you asked what I meant. This is part of the reason I’ve always wanted to release the movie online, in the public domain.

… In the early days of furry, people would trade sketchbooks and Xerox their zines, and I think this spirit still animates the fandom.

When all is said and done, everything goes back to the furry creative commons. So if I can pull a movie out of this mix, make it cheaply, and let it get swallowed up again – that’s exciting to me.”

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