Chicken Dinner

A study of the cultural dichotomies between notions of killing and preparing ones own food as either grisly, habitual, or beguiling.

Presented via the nightly cooking procedure of two indigenous families in the remote villages of Santa Rita, near the Amazon Basin, and on La Isla del Sol in the Andes Mountains, both meals are prepared in modern day Bolivia. Each family, respectively from opposite sides of the country, offers a different image of the Bolivian indigenous experience. The film, however, weaves both meals together over the course of a coming rainfall, blurring lines temporal, spacial, and lingual between the separate animal killings.

Exploring the preparation and cooking of boiled chicken, roasted guinea pig, and vegetable soup the film exhibits the experience of colonization as an opponent of embracing complicated world views in nations with prodigious and intricate indigenous populations such as Bolivia. All of this is done not without considering the largely Western aversion to the brutality and necessity of any type of killing, in which we so often indulge with our eyes closed.

"He saw heaven open and something like a large sheet being let down to earth by its four corners. It contained all kinds of four-footed animals and reptiles of the earth, as well as birds of the air. Then a voice spoke to him: 'Get up, Peter, kill and eat!'"

- Peter's Vision: (Leviticus 11:1-47; Deuteronomy 14:1-21)

"Kill or be killed, eat or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out of the depths of Time..."

- Jack London, The Call of the Wild

  • Kai Nealis
    Director
  • Zach Chapple
    Sound
  • Randall Taylor
    Score
  • Ryan Graves
    Color
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    Dena de Pollo
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Experimental, Short
  • Genres:
    Ethnographic Documentary, Experimental Culinary Cinema
  • Runtime:
    13 minutes 35 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    January 1, 2024
  • Production Budget:
    1,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States, United States
  • Country of Filming:
    Bolivia, Plurinational State of
  • Language:
    Quechua, Spanish
  • Shooting Format:
    DCP
  • Aspect Ratio:
    3:2
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    Yes - Ithaca College
Director Biography - Kai Nealis

b. 1996: Chicago, IL; live/work: Portland, OR

I grew up in Great Falls, Montana and Olympia, Washington. I graduated from Ithaca College in Upstate New York with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Cinema and Photography Production and Latin American Studies. My work ranges from the documentary study of site-specific economic and environmental concerns in Latin America to narrative inquiries into social realist issues in contemporary domestic American life. The direction of my research continues to be influenced by the Latin@ community as well youth urban mentorship initiatives and immigrant youth case management for The Office of Refugee Resettlement.

Focusing on issues of land use, class, and globalization, my films have been exhibited most notably at The Cannes Film Festival and The Ivy Film Festival, among others. My video art has been featured in the Ladder exhibition, a pop-up gallery in Upstate New York, and in Feast Your Eyes at Root Division in San Francisco.

I have also written and played drums in the rock projects Fir, Cameraperson, Pale Violet, and Unseen Object.

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