Chicken Real

Chicken Real

16mm, color, sound, 22.45 min
An industrial short made for the world's second largest poultry producer, CHICKEN REAL incorporates subversive bits of satire in its promotion of the assembly-line approach to mass-manufacturing food. ...
Rental format: 16mm

Stills

About

An industrial short made for the world's second largest poultry producer, CHICKEN REAL incorporates subversive bits of satire in its promotion of the assembly-line approach to mass-manufacturing food. Music recorded in North Carolina, of a group playing all the chicken songs they knew. Blank shot this documentary for an automated chicken growing operation that produces 156 million chicken a year! He brought all his skill to bear on the project, and added a narration that's only barely tongue-in cheek. It's his funniest film, one that works on its own terms as a fascinating documentary on the chicken biz and also a humorous comment on itself. Surreal images abound – hundreds of chickens clicking toward a feeding belt, thousands of chicks huddling together is a giant breeding room, dead chickens flying across a table, passing through hellish flames on a conveyer, receiving giblet transplants. But the most interesting thing is that Blank evades the issue of chicken death completely – skipping in an instant from live chickens to dead ones with absolutely no mention that birds are dying. It's the only Blank film in which death is never acknowledged – and as a result death pervades the picture as it does no other. Chickens of incomparable succulence. – Micheal Goodwin, Pacific Film Archive

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