The best cat video on the Internet

That is a high claim, I know. But over Labor Day weekend, a combination of dedicated curation and popular vote resulted in Henri 2, Paw de Deux being named the best Internet cat video.

The Internet Cat Film Festival, sponsored by Minneapolis' Walker Museum of Art, drew a live audience of more than 10,000 people last Thursday night. Videos were curated from a massive collection submitted online, and were grouped into thematic categories— foreign films, for instance, or comedies. Henri 2 took home the Golden Kitty, a People's Choice award.

Bonus: If arguing about the merits of Henri 2 weren't enough of a gift to your procrastination tendencies, you can also check out a full list of all the films screened at the festival, including links.

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

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MORE: Culture • Everything Happens in the Midwest • Funny • lolcats • minneapolis

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http://twitter.com/mr_raccoon Jason

I can haz existentialism?
- Guest
  
  deleted
RedShirt77

Warning, watching the entire film festival at home takes a couple hours and really isn’t as good without the laughter of 10,000 other viewers.

On a side note, the film fest caused a traffic jam and pretty much filled my neighborhood with cars. Good times.
Thad

At last, after sixty years of life, I understand what all those French films were about
franko

it is brilliant in its simplicity. a fine choice, i say.
http://twitter.com/KevinCarson1 Kevin Carson

Very nice. Still not as good as Bert the Cat.
petz79

Even worse French than the first part, but still funny. Funny in an existencialistic way.
Paul Renault

I listened to it, but without watching it.

I suspect that the narrator either learned his french from waiters who were deservedly-out-of-work actors, or from watching episodes of ‘Friends’…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqwzvtjeYBQ

Edited to add: I have forgotten just how unbelievably bad ALL of the actors were at speaking what was supposed to be french in 1995′s ‘The American President’. It’s like we were back to jewish actors playing ‘injuns’ in westerns.

He should have gone with Lii-uc Teyssier from ‘French Kiss’. At least Kevin Klein is fluent.
- xkot
  
  I thought that for a chat, his French was pretty bon.
- Jake0748
  
  Lighten up dude. This is an internet cat video we’re talkin’ about here.
- TheMudshark
  
  You French speaking people have it good compared to us German speakers, how they butcher our language. You´d think Nazis out of all people would know how to pronounce German.
  - Paul Renault
    
    As a teenager, I knew that Hogan Heroes’ ‘Schultz was German, but I wasn’t sure about the Germans on the show ‘Rat Patrol’…
    
    So I took German in high school, just so I could find out. Bonus: I was able to find out what one of the inside jokes on the show was.
    
    /And really, I still can’t get over just how badly the actors in (the large budget, almost-the-21st-century-so-what’s-the-excuse?) ‘The American President’ mangle the french. It’s a spectacular achievement, really.
Lis Riba

Walker Arts Center also created a Youtube playlist of the entire program http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC0B137D835A3C970 . It’s 79 videos with a running-time just under 2 hours.

They also have a second playlist of “honorable mentions”
Guest

MARU
timquinn

” . . . and sometimes the cat door . . . is closed.”

Oh, I weep.
IndexMe

Only best if you like ennui. Boredom. If it is the best how come I get nauseated partway through and have to stop it before killing myself whereas all the other BB cat vids even stills have me rolling on the floor until I am nearly asphyxiated? (In a good way?)
jazzbo

i laughed til i cried,

then, having wept, my experience was complete.
http://www.facebook.com/dan.linfield Dan Linfield

next will be les quatre cents meows.
A. .

This is a pretty serious catctor.
- A. .
  
  EDIT: sort of like the Gerard Depardieu of the cat world. Also, I will take this moment to plug my dadaist love-poem twitter feed: #stuffmyheartsez.
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1352714406 Amy Ranger

You guys are so late to this party… serious cat-o-philes have been weeping over Henri and his ennui for months now. Meow!
Autonymous Media Daemon

An IRL cat vid film fest was a terrible idea, and I’m not surprised that this won.
Onze Jermain

Really cool cat, I Also have a Kitten named Mira, she just had her new teeth. I have a movie of her on my blog and youtube, just look for OnzeJermain and you will find us. I film almost every day. I am dutch, but i can vlog in English. SO if you wanne see us just look for me on the web.