Samba: unconfirmed pigeons in Paris.

Title: Samba

Year:  2014

Director:  Olivier Nakache, Eric Toledano

Running time: 115 min.

Country: France

This film depicts the tough life of an illegal immigrant (Samba) in Paris, how he is forced to accept all kinds of jobs to survive in the city and how he falls in love with Alice (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Although we empathize with Samba, the reality is that we are only focused on pigeon appearances in the film, so we will skip describing his adventures. There are two scenes related to pigeons. The first one occurs when the police scramble onto some scaffolding to catch the immigrants, Samba and his friends escape running on the roofs of buildings. When Samba is leaving a roof hatch we can hear pigeons cooing and see a feather next to the window (red arrow in the screen shot). Of course, this does not count, it is a near miss.

A small feather (pointed at by the red arrow) next to Samba, the film's protagonist.

The second scene is more explicit: Samba is talking with his uncle, who is in depressed because he has lost his job.

In this picture we can see Samba's uncle's sadness.

Samba is trying to encourage him to start a new project and is getting dressed for a date with his girlfriend. In the background we can observe a tv playing a documentary and some birds (unconfirmed pigeons) flying way. We would have to find out the documentary's name to clearly discern where they are pigeons or other birds.

Samba is getting dressed. We can observe the tv on the right side of the screenshot. 

Here we can see the tv with more detail. Some unconfirmed pigeons appear. 

Details of the pigeon starring 

• Source: Samba. Starring moment: 1:21:10 and 1:40:26
• Pigeon activity: A flock of unconfirmed pigeons fly away, probably scared by the camera. 
• Symbolism: None, they represent wild animals.
• Relevance: Low, they are part of a tv documentary that Samba's sad uncle is watching. It is not clear whether this documentary helps him to feel better. 
• Training level: None. They are wild animals. 

Fifth edition of Pigeon Quest

Welcome to the Fifth Edition of Pigeon Quest. Here, instead of finding the pigeon in the film, you have to find the film with the pigeon.

Just write in the comments the film name with a recognized user name. An anonymous comment will produce an anonymous winner. The first one in succeeding will win and receive an honorary certificate. 

The winner of this quest can be seen here.

The film review can be found here. 

You can see other editions of this Quest here.

In this sequence we can observe two people entering an abandoned building.....

When they are observing the ruins, two doves and a pigeon start flying, surprised by the intruders....

La casa de las palomas: the tragic ending of the pigeon inquisition

Title: La casa de las palomas

Year:  1972

Director:  Claudio Guerín

Running time: 90 min.

Country: Spain

A film entitled La casa de las palomas (The house of the pigeons) looks promising in terms of pigeon activity. After watching it, I have to confess that it was much more than I had expected. There are pigeons everywhere, outdoors, indoors, on the characters' heads an even within their minds. We are facing a pigeon-intensive film with feathered appearances of great symbolism and even horror.

This film presents a bizarre love triangle (between humans) in which we aren't particularly interested initially, given that we focus, as usual, on the pigeon appearances. However, in this film, the sexual conducts of the humans has a strong impact on the future (and tragic) actions related to the pigeons.

From my perspective, this film has some parallelism with Requiem for a dream. What at the beginning looks like a romantic film (in this context, with pigeons involved), later turns into a drama that leads to a pigeon apocalypse with several gory scenes (with pigeons as the tragic protagonists). Let's start from the beginning. Note: the following contains several spoilers about the film plot.

There is a man, that has a mistress who is the daughter of his would-be lover. They conduct their affair secretly in a house that belongs to a lady, who happens to be a pigeon fancier.

The lady pigeon fancier that lives in the house with one of the animals. Based on the subsequent actions taken by the birds, Torquemada (a famous Spanish inquisitor) could be a good name for the dove.

The pigeon lofts are in the roof of the house. It is interesting to highlight that all of them are doves. These animals, known for their purist symbolism really do turn out to be puritanical creatures that do not approve of the immoral relationship that is taking place in their abode (with the approval of their keeper).

It looks like a innocent dove, but do not be fooled, we are looking at a feathered inquisitor.

So, the doves decide to act, with all the possible enforcement measures that this creature is capable of. They focus on the mistress, maybe because she was weaker than the man, maybe because she was the female (in this case, we are also be talking about sexist birds).  Consequently, the first punishment action occurs in the pigeon loft, when the girl comes to visit the birds. Several doves attack her and she has to escape, just a little scared (of course, we are talking about doves, not Hitchcock's crows).

The mistress being attacked by the doves when she was visiting their loft.

The thing is that the doves and pigeons in this film are magical, and have the ability to appear supernaturally in the house. Knowing the intention of the birds, it doesn't bode well.

Doves and pigeons magically appear in the living room looking to deliver punishment.

Then, one an amazing sequence is displayed. We can see an eye-to-eye stare-off between the girl and the inquisitors. With a little  imagination we can see the look of judgement in the pigeon's glare.

Eye-to-eye stare-off between the protagonist and the inquisitor pigeons.

The punishment process continues. The girl faints and the the birds enter her mind by means of dreadful nightmares. The girl sees herself dead, surrounded by the doves.

Representation of a dead girl surrounded by the pigeons. At least in dreams, they have reached their goal.

Fortunately for the protagonist, there is an unexpected turn in the plot when a fan that was activated in the room got rid of the pigeons by cutting them with the blades. Amazingly, this romantic film turns into a gory massacre for the pigeons.

When the girl's lover comes in the room he finds a dead pigeon next to the door. He surprisingly finds all the doves dead and the girl saved. This is the end of the story: all the birds have been killed by the fan and the lovers reunite.

Tragic shot of a dead pigeon next to the room's door. 

The lovers finally reunite in a room filled with dead birds and avian blood everywhere. 

Details of the pigeon starring 

• Source: La casa de las palomas. Starring moment: many of them, 0:41:37, 0:49:43, 1:26:00
• Pigeon activity: There is plenty of pigeon activity. In this film we can find normal pigeons in many locations: in the loft, rooms, on furniture, even on the characters. They exhibit an aggressive behaviour against the girl. The doves in the film look lovely, but they are actually evil and full of resentment. They are even worse than the Pigeons from Hell. 
• Symbolism: Very high. The film uses doves to reflect a pure (or puritan) moral opposed to the liberal conduct of the film's protagonist. In a different way from the conventional symbol of pigeons (peace, fraternity, ...) these indignant animal decide to take action and punish and kill the protagonist. 
• Relevance: Very high. Pigeons are responsible for tormenting the protagonist in many ways, including physical action and physiological torture that almost took the life of the protagonist.  
• Training level: Very high. The doves act very well in this film. There are no special effects, thus all the performances are real and feel very realistic taking into account the complexity of the storyline. 

Film tribute: Trainspotting 2

From Pigeon Movie Database we wish you a happy New Year with this film tribute.

Choose flight.
Choose a flock.
Choose a town square.
Choose a bird partner,

Choose a cosy big nest
Choose bread crumbs, parks,
pigeon-feeding pensioners, and eaves with good views
Choose flight.

The core: pigeon apocalipsis... and a fishy surprise

Title: The core

Year:  2003

Director:  Jon Amiel

Running time: 135 min.

Country: United States

I am imagining a conversation between the two film script writers, named Mr. Allan and Mr. Palmer. Note, the names are purely fictional. Any similarity with real people is purely coincidental.

Mr. Allan: We need to create terror...
Mr. Palmer:  Let's do it with pigeons!! Hitchcock did it before with birds, now we can create avian terror again!!
Mr. Allan:  Hitchcock used crows!! Crows are traditionally sinister creatures but pigeons are harmless. You will never see a pigeon eating the eye of a hanged person. No one will feel fear with pigeons.
Mr. Palmer: Maybe the effect of one pigeon is negligible but if we create a horde of dangerous pigeons we will make the public fear the birds again.
Mr. Allan: You are insane.

And they made it....  first they set the location, one of the most pigeon-busy areas in the world: Trafalgar Square. Then, they introduced the movie plot, an alteration in the Earth's core that changes the magnetic fields and turns the pigeons disoriented and a bit crazy. Finally, the context, a flock of pigeons with suicidal tendencies.

Without the context it looks like a typical pigeon flock, but it actually is an horde of terror.

Suddenly, the pigeons lose control (because of the change in the magnetic fields) and start smashing into everything around them. People panic and start escaping from the square.

A terrorized family escaping from the pigeon horde.

In the scene, most of the pigeons are CGI animated, like the screen shot below, where we observe a quite rigid pigeon hitting a car windscreen.

Computer-generated pigeon hitting a windscreen.

However, to add extra realism, other pigeons are genuine, like the one standing bravely on the steering wheel of a bus.The bus driver, in contrast, seems to be scared by the avian presence.

A real pigeon scaring a bus driver. The pigeon is now in the control of the bus.

Finally, the pigeon turns out not to be such a good driver and causes the bus accident. Other vehicles also collide in multiple road accidents. A total disaster.

The calamity extends to the surrounding area when tens of pigeons crash into shop windows, breaking the glass and increasing the havoc. It is worth mentioning that for completely unknown reasons, the CGI replaced one pigeon with a fish (screenshot below) at the moment of hitting the glass. Maybe was a mistake, a problem with the software repository, or a kind of joke, because pigeons and fish tend not to fly together. The complete scene can be seen here.

When tens of pigeons break the glass one flying fish appears in scene. 

Details of the pigeon starring 

• Source: The core. Starring moment: 0:07:30
• Pigeon activity: A huge group of London pigeons lose their orientation because of a change in the Earth's magnetic fields. Because of this, they start colliding with their surroundings, causing more chaos and remarkable destruction  
• Symbolism: The film introduces several examples that represent how disastrous a change in the Earth's core could be for nature. In particular, the scene shows how innocent animals - the pigeons- can be turned into dreadful kamikazes by the Earth magnetic fields.
• Relevance: Medium, in the scene many people are scared and injured because of the chaotic actions of the pigeons.Unfortunately, there are not consequences for the remaining film plot. 
• Training level: Medium. Most of the animals are computer-made, but the ones that are real (like the one standing next to the bus driver) performs very well. 

Pigeon Movie Database in the media

This section summarizes the appearances of this blog in public media. For us (me and the pigeons) it is always a matter of pride to be cited by the press. So here goes!

Time magazine cite us in the article entitled "Someone Created a Database That Tracks Pigeon Activity In Movies". From my point of view, the use of 'someone' sounds a bit dismissive. The good thing is that the article is quite positive and nice. For instance, they mention "[...] You may have missed these avian moments, but the eagle-eyed creators of the Pigeon Movie Database did not. They have documented and catalogued many, many instances of pigeons’ moments of cinematic glory. [...]"

The Independent also mentions this blog, in the article titled "The Pigeon Movie Database intrepidly charts the activity of pigeons in cinema". This title sounds somewhat more enthusiastic than the previous one. They also go straight to the main essence of this project: "A blog that gives in-depth analyses of pigeons in popular films.".

Over here, we will try to keep growing the database with more and more pigeon appearances.... in the hope that one day the pigeons will get the recognition they deserve in films.