Telluride Library/Second Chance present Katrina pet rescue movie

31 Aug Telluride Library/Second Chance present Katrina pet rescue movie

[click “Play” to hear Susan’s conversation with director Tom McPhee]

Tom McPhee

On Monday, August 31, Telluride’s Wilkinson Public Library is really going to the dogs. Starting at noon, Second Chance Humane Society is out front, its Pet Mobile filled with animals in need of loving homes.

At 5:30, Second Chance gets to plead its cause, followed by a real life Katrina pet rescue story featuring locals Alfredo Lopez and Nancy Landau. (Bring Kleenex, a checkbook and a leash.)

At 6 p.m., the Library and the Second Chance present a screening of director Tom McPhee’s  award-winning “An American Opera: The Greatest Pet Rescue Ever.” What could have been pessimism porn about an American tragedy turned out to be an upper about the triumph of the human spirit.

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Gulf Coast pets took a back seat to human safety, that is, until members of one of the largest grassroots animal-rescue efforts in America’s history –  the joint effort between the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) and the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS), plus dozens of local organizations and thousands and thousands of volunteers from across the country – mobilized to save the storm’s animal victims. McPhee’s film champions the volunteers in particular whose only concern was saving animals, not who is Top Dog.

McPhee narrates his own 77-minute-long film, which one critic described as “a stunning piece of citizen journalism.”

The Wilkinson Public Library is one stop on McPhee’s Rescue Party Tour of independent theaters, libraries and auditoriums across the country in an effort to save more of man’s best friends.