London Short Film Festival 2010

‘The Reapers’ is a short experimental documentary film on traditional pigeon hunters, concealed in their tower hide, deep in an oak forest in south west France. Combining a score by Olivier Messiaen with factual scenes and dialogue, the film depicts a secretive, curious and disconcerting rural practice, taking place in a rudimentary encampment of cages, wires and decoys. Interweaving the absurd and the sinister, the film captures the relationship between the hunters and the birds; force-feeding their prized stool-pigeons and sharing out their prized quarry at the end of the day.

The film was made with the assistance of Channel 4’s FourDocs bursary scheme, and continues Cartwright & Jordan’s depiction of mankind’s disparate relationship with fellow species and the natural environment.