M6nths: let's spend 12 minutes in the shoes of a farmed piglet
Environment — di Elisabetta Scuri
The horrors of factory farming through the eyes of a piglet: in the short film M6nths there are no words to describe images that speak for themselves.
M6nths: let's spend 12 minutes in the shoes of a farmed piglet
The horrors of factory farming through the eyes of a piglet: in the short film M6nths there are no words to describe images that speak for themselves.
"Have you ever tried to see me for what I am?" goes the song accompanying the trailer of M6nths, and it is also the question the protagonist puts to each one of us. In the short film by director Eline Helena Schellekens, we have the opportunity to see through the eyes of a piglet the farm where it was born, with no narrator's voice: there is no need for one.
M6nths, six months without light
The darkness is what strikes you most. Light filters through a dusty little window; outside, the leaves of the trees rustle in the breeze, and a butterfly lands on the glass. We watch it. We would so love to reach it, to play with it, to run through the grass while it flies above our heads. But we cannot. And we never will.
If we were free, we could live up to ten years. Instead, our life will last six months at most. We don't know that, but for some reason we feel afraid. Constantly. Our little brothers and sisters jostle us, the pen is cramped. We are hungry, but for our mother lying down to nurse us is difficult and exhausting. The butterfly is still there. What lies beyond the glass?
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The petition to abolish the use of cages in farming
Eline Helena Schellekens, Dutch, made the short film M6nths (Six Months) while studying at the University of the West of England, in Bristol. Before writing her thesis, she spent a month filming the lives of piglets inside various French, Belgian and United Kingdom farms. For this she received the Panda award, one of the most prestigious accolades for nature productions. She also decided to support the European Citizens' Initiative against cages in farming, End the cage age: until 18 February, M6nths is available exclusively on the websites of the 140 organisations supporting the cause, including Legambiente, Lav, Animal equality, Enpa. The goal is to collect one million signatures to ask the European Commission to put an end to the inhumane treatment of the more than 300 million animals suffering in cages. So far, 399,233 people have signed the petition.
“End the Cage Age” chiede la fine dell’uso di ogni tipo di #gabbia per allevare #animali a scopo alimentare, ed è sostenuta da una cordata di più di 100 associazioni in 24 paesi. Firma e fai firmare ✍️ bit.ly/2OHYAIC 👈
#endthecageage #europasenzagabbie
#endthecageage #europasenzagabbie
"The Year of the Pig has just begun in China. It could be an opportunity to get to know better an animal that is so intelligent," the director hopes. More and more people are choosing to give up meat once they learn how it is produced — a process that also requires vast amounts of water and energy and accounts for the majority of the greenhouse gas emissions that our society releases into the atmosphere every year. Two things are certain: it is best to have tissues to hand before watching M6nths, and all animals, piglets included, deserve to enjoy the small joys that life holds in store for every creature.