Céline Roustan
Farming is one of those ancestral savoir-faires, as mankind has been raising chickens for centuries. In his short documentary Chicken Stories, Jonathan Pickett invites us to meet the various chickens he has been raising on a farm outside of Oakland with his pals. From visiting the different coops to watching all those newbie farmers getting a hang of things, millennial style, we follow their journey, sharing the challenges and the victories.
“It struck me how complex the creatures revealed themselves to be if one just took some time to pay close attention”
Even though he has spent most of his life in California, Pickett actually has farming in his blood, from previous generations living in Kentucky. In 2019, he moved to a farm in the Oakland hills with some friends. It came with many animals but he confessed that he “immediately took to the chickens”. Quickly inspired by the birds, he was struck by “how complex the creatures revealed themselves to be”. So, like any good filmmaker, he grabbed his camera and started to document their days fascinated by “their behavioral patterns, interpersonal dynamics, and the life in their eyes”.
This passion led him to the decision to have them be the main characters of the story and we journey around the farm, just like in any narrative exposition, we get to know the different chickens and how they interact with one another. Through title cards, we understand the dynamic of the farm and what is at stake throughout the film in the different locations/chicken communities. The editing doing an impressive job of presenting the different storylines, each with its own emotional journey, from what I can only imagine was a lot of footage – Pickett himself admitted that he “waddled around” hoping for a verité approach that would convey a certain level of intimacy and immersion in the chicken’s lives for the audience. Attaching the GoPro to the hen gave them additional footage that fed into this approach, while also being an, albeit misguided, attempt to figure out where the hen would lay her eggs.
“I want to encourage viewers to contend with the humanity of the animals, as if to express in the smallest of ways: the life force that animates you and me is the same force that animates these birds” – director Jonathan Pickett
Obviously, you live and you learn and throughout the runtime of the film, we witness these young farmers creatively trying to find solutions to the daily problems of running a coop, or many in their case. From raising the baby chicks, to dealing with the roosters pent up anger, we follow the learning curve of these farmers, investing in their journey, while also sharing in the healthy dose of humor that comes with their work. The fact that they use very modern tools, Siri, Amazon deliveries etc to help them perform tasks that have been done for centuries definitely creates a funny and ironic paradox. By the end, the film organically (pun intended) wraps, as we see the baby chicks forming their own coop and the farmers becoming more and more comfortable in their new shoes.
Chicken Stories has already had quite a festival run with selections at the Palm Springs ShortFest and Seattle’s SIFF, it also picked up the Artistic Vision Award at Big Sky. It was released online as part of The New Yorker collection. Pickett is already in pre-production for his next short film, which is a “music-centric Western told in a docu-fiction hybrid fashion”, based on and starring the cowboy singer Johnny Bencomo. The two of them met at a bar in Tombstone, Arizona where Johnny was performing, and where they’ll return to film in August. He is also currently researching a feature doc he is doing with People People Media and developing a narrative fiction that he co-wrote currently titled Birds of Massachusetts.