Grasshopper Republic

Deep in the forests of western Uganda millions of long-horned grasshoppers swarm together to mate in a rare reminder of Nature’s epic scale. It follows that Man has found a way to profit from this beautiful reproductive cycle. Harvesting grasshoppers is a seriously lucrative business; fortunes are made in a matter of weeks providing this delicacy to city-dwellers in the lowlands. Following a local trapping team in verité style, these modern day prospectors push into remote forests and villages seeking their fortune by capturing this elusive prey by the barrel load with powerful lights. In contrast, specialized macro cameras simultaneously transport the audience into an immersive natural world from the perspective of the grasshoppers accentuating the bizarrely human-like qualities of these insects. As our metaphor on Man’s fraught relationship with Nature continues to unfold, we learn the harrowing cost that these toxic lights bestow upon our band of trappers and their homeland. (Guanajuato International Film Festival)