student filmaker wanting to make a film about pigeon racing!

[milliejuno]

Hi! Thank you for letting me join your group, i'm very happy to be here! I hope this is the right channel to send this message (please redirect me if not!)

My name is Millie i'm an amateur filmmaker and i've just started my MA in Visual Anthropology at Goldsmiths University In London,

I've started trying to research pigeon fancying and pigeon racing and i've been finding it an amazing and fascinating thing and therefore i'm wanting to create my final documentary film for my masters about it, focussing mainly on the connections developed between both people and pigeons and the connections people form with each other through the shared love of keeping and racing pigeons.

My film isn't due until the end of August next year but i'm wanting to get the ball rolling so i can really focus on making deep personal connections with people and the pigeons they keep and allow space for collaboration so that the people involved in my film can guide their own stories and what they want to say.

Most of my work stems around people and their connections to birds, with my undergraduate film being about starling murmurations, which you can watch in this link on youtube:

So, i am hoping to post this as a call out to see if anyone would be up for being a part of the film in anyway that you want to be, either filming, or just voice over or even just having a call to tell me about what you do for my research- don't worry if you are camera shy! And i am happy to travel to you over the course of the year.

I would love to centre my film around a few people and i want the storyline of the documentary to be shaped by you!

If any of you are interested (or if you know someone that would be) please message me and we can have a chat,

Thank you so so much!

[chrisroscoe]

This is amazing and I could be up for this. Do you have questions to ask fanciers ?

Maybe reach out too
A club or Federationnos you can get videos being released in race day

[Buster121]

Hi and welcome, sounds good and I hope you succeed in your quest

[Diamond Dave]

Hi Millie and welcome to our family. As individuals, we are spread all over the country.
I'm sure we'd all be happy to be film stars lol and believe me when I say most pigeon fanciers share a similar passion for their birds and could talk "for England" on their chosen subject.
It may be best for you to let us know the area where you are so that you can focus locally on your selected candidates.
In any case, good luck with your quest.

[milliejuno]

This is amazing and I could be up for this. Do you have questions to ask fanciers ?

Maybe reach out too
A club or Federationnos you can get videos being released in race day

Hi Chris! (i hope im replying to the message proerly i couldnt figure out hoe to on the forum!)

Thanks so much, you can reach out to me on email [email protected] i would love to connect
Right now its very up in the air but the central question is : What kinds of relationships are made between people and pigeons through the practice of pigeon racing, and what kinds of relationships between people emerge through their shared relationship with the birds?

Its very open ended because i want to develop a more organic relationship with whoever is in the film so questions will be very conversational, i would love to come visit a loft and just see where the conversation takes us in relation to the birds!

heres a list of some starting questions though just so you can get an idea of the themes:

How did you first get into pigeon racing, and what made you want to keep doing it?
What is your relationship with your pigeons like?
How would you describe what they mean to you?
Do you think you know your pigeons as individuals?
How do you recognise their different personalities, behaviours or abilities?
How do you communicate with your pigeons, and how do you understand what they are communicating to you?
Can you tell me about the care and everyday routines involved in keeping pigeons?
What does a normal day with your birds look like?
What is it like to send a pigeon away to race and wait for it to come home?
What goes through your mind while you are waiting?
What does ‘home’ mean to a racing pigeon, in your experience?
And what does coming home mean to you?
How has pigeon racing shaped your relationships with other people?
Friends, family, other fanciers, your club or wider community?
What do you think people who have never kept or raced pigeons misunderstand about pigeon racing or pigeon fanciers?
What is it about pigeons that has kept you interested in them?
What do you think you have learnt from spending so much time with them?

[milliejuno]

Hi Millie and welcome to our family. As individuals, we are spread all over the country.
I'm sure we'd all be happy to be film stars lol and believe me when I say most pigeon fanciers share a similar passion for their birds and could talk "for England" on their chosen subject.
It may be best for you to let us know the area where you are so that you can focus locally on your selected candidates.
In any case, good luck with your quest.

Hi Dave! Thank you so much for your reply, Im based in London but im back and forth a lot with where my family live in coventry, very happy to travel anywhere in the UK though because ive been meaning to explore more places! Reach out to me on email if you would like i would appreciate it a lot! [email protected]

[milliejuno]

Hi and welcome, sounds good and I hope you succeed in your quest

Hi! would you be interested in being a part of this or know anyone who would?

[milliejuno]

heres a short description of my film proposal too, please email me at [email protected] if you or anyone you know would help!

This film explores the relationships between pigeon fanciers and their racing pigeons, following the everyday practices of breeding, training, caring for and racing birds. Rather than approaching pigeon racing simply as a sport, the film considers it as a multispecies practice through which people develop particular forms of knowledge, attachment and community.

At its centre is the relationship between movement and home. Racing pigeons can travel hundreds of miles away from their lofts, yet are expected to navigate their way back to a particular place and person. The film asks what is produced through this relationship of departure and return: how people come to know individual birds, how birds become embedded in family histories and communities, and how practices of care coexist with competition, selection and control.

Through observational filming, conversations and attention to the everyday rhythms of the loft, the film explores pigeon fancying as a form of multispecies sociality. Like my previous work on starling murmurations, it is interested in the ways that attention to birds can bring people together. But where the murmuration offered a fleeting encounter between humans and wild birds, pigeon racing offers an intimate, long-term relationship in which humans and birds continually shape one another's lives.