When
the Edinburgh International Film Festival began
in 1947 it was a festival dedicated to documentary.
No matter how much the event has flourished since,
that commitment to the documentary form has remained
constant. Under the umbrella title of Imagining
Reality, this year’s festival is peppered
with outstanding excursions into the real world,
ranging from the rape case Raw Deal: A Question
of Consent to Startup.Com, charting the rise and
fall of an internet company, and Sundance prize
winner Southern Comfort, a heartbreaking account
of a female-to-male transsexual diagnosed with
ovarian cancer.
It may not be the best of this year’s documentaries
but The Natural History of The Chicken probably
qualifies as the most eccentric and entertaining.
A festival favourite across the world over the
past year, it earned Mark Lewis a Directors’
Guild of America nomination and continues his
fascination with wild and wonderful tales from
the animal kingdom. Edinburgh veterans may remember
his 1987 oddity Cane Toads - An Unnatural History,
which explored Australia’s love-hate relationship
with the creatures introduced to rid the land
of the destructive sugar cane beetles in the 1930s.
The Natural History of the Chicken is dedicated
to Italian renaissance natural historian Ulisse
Aldrovandi who "perceived the chicken as part
of a much larger order of things". It is packed
with facts, informing us that US consumers spend
40bn a year on chicken products, that each American
will eat 80lb of chicken in a year and that eight
billion chickens are slaughtered a year to satisfy
demand. Information is almost a side order to
the film’s main course - a celebration of
the chicken and the humans who have taken it to
their hearts. An Australian with a degree in economics,
Lewis has a rare ability to put his subjects at
ease and let them reveal themselves without commentary
or judgment. Thus we meet the lovely Janet Bonney
from Maine who has 16 chickens. One bitter winter,
she found one frozen solid under the house with
its claws in the air, not unlike what you might
purchase at the frozen foods section of the supermarket.
Scurrying into the house, she laid it on the table
and went to look for a container to convey it
to its final resting place. On her return, she
noticed a slight pulse. Placing it next to a hot
water bottle, she administered CPR and mouth-to-beak
resuscitation and within three hours it was clucking
about looking for its dinner.
Miracle Mike proved to be even more resilient.
Divested of its head by a Colorado farmer in the
1940s, it refused to die and was placed on display
across America. Relatives of the farmer reveal
how an eye dropper for water and hand feeding
overcame the minor problem of how the bird could
eat without the benefit of a head.
Although more of an amusing essay than a political
tract, the film clearly favours the joys of free
range over mass production. Lewis offers no big
political statements but makes his point by contrasting
the cramped conditions of factory-bred hens with
glowing outdoor scenes of birds pecking at food
in the wild. He also strives to show that chickens
are more intelligent than we imagine. They like
to watch television, for example (Pavarotti seems
a particular favourite) and one noble bird is
even prepared to sacrifice itself when the shadow
of a hawk looms over its chicks.
The Natural History of the Chicken won’t
cause a massive slump in sales for KFC but, like
the best documentaries, it might make you pause
for thought, especially when confronted by Florida’s
Karin Estrada. A bubbly redhead, Karin believes
she has found her soul mate in a Japanese Silkie
Bantam rooster called Cotton. Cotton receives
a daily shampoo and blow dry, loves corn on the
cob and wears a special diaper to prevent any
‘accidents’ around the house. "He’s
such a little sweetheart," she coos. "May you
all have the same joy I’ve had knowing a
little chicken." And most people think they are
just good for laying eggs.
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>>> archive >>>
When
the Edinburgh International Film Festival began
in 1947 it was a festival dedicated to documentary.
No matter how much the event has flourished since,
that commitment to the documentary form has remained
constant. Under the umbrella title of Imagining
Reality, this year’s festival is peppered
with outstanding excursions into the real world,
ranging from the rape case Raw Deal: A Question
of Consent to Startup.Com, charting the rise and
fall of an internet company, and Sundance prize
winner Southern Comfort, a heartbreaking account
of a female-to-male transsexual diagnosed with
ovarian cancer. 