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Directed by Mark Lewis

Directed by Mark Lewis

5 Episodes

Mark Lewis makes nature films like you’ve never seen before. In their strangeness, all the sublimity, absurdity, and incomprehensibility of the animal world—especially where it intersects with human society—comes into fascinating and wryly humorous focus. It’s little wonder that Werner Herzog is a big fan. Whether chronicling the ecological folly that unleashed a plague of biblical proportions upon Australia (CANE TOADS: AN UNNATURAL HISTORY) or the frequently strange relationships between people and fowl (THE NATURAL HISTORY OF THE CHICKEN), these films reveal as much about the mysteries of the animal kingdom as they do about the endless oddities of human nature.

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Directed by Mark Lewis

5 Episodes

  • Cane Toads: An Unnatural History
    49:12
    Cane Toads: An Unnatural History
    Episode 1

    Cane Toads: An Unnatural History

    Episode 1

    Directed by Mark Lewis • 1988 • Australia
    Starring Tip Byrne, Glen Ingram, H. W. Kerr

    Mark Lewis takes the nature documentary into new realms of the humorous, surreal, and downright bizarre with this stranger-than-fiction tale of the ultimate environmental self-own. The cane toad—Bufo marinus, a...

  • Rat
    56:05
    Rat
    Episode 2

    Rat

    Episode 2

    Directed by Mark Lewis • 1998 • United Kingdom

    This witty, charming, and unusual documentary chronicles one of the most enduring rivalries in nature: man versus rat in their endless struggle to control New York City. The war is fought on every front—in sewer and subway, tenement and skyscraper a...

  • Animalicious
    54:45
    Animalicious
    Episode 3

    Animalicious

    Episode 3

    Directed by Mark Lewis • 1999 • United States, United Kingdom

    A film about fate, coexistence, vanity, justice, karma, and forgiveness, ANIMALICIOUS collects six stories of people and the animals that shot them, fell on them, and generally brought mayhem of one sort or another to their lives. Fil...

  • The Natural History of the Chicken
    54:35
    The Natural History of the Chicken
    Episode 4

    The Natural History of the Chicken

    Episode 4

    Directed by Mark Lewis • 2000 • United States

    While most know chicken as a dinner-plate staple, few pause to consider this bird’s many virtues. In this fascinating and gently comic documentary, director Mark Lewis delves into the under-recognized complexities of this seemingly simple animal. Thr...

  • Cane Toads: The Conquest
    1:24:02
    Cane Toads: The Conquest
    Episode 5

    Cane Toads: The Conquest

    Episode 5

    Directed by Mark Lewis • 2010 • Australia

    Two decades after his cult documentary CANE TOADS: AN UNNATURAL HISTORY first brought the story to the screen, director Mark Lewis invites you to join the cane toads on their unstoppable journey across the Australian continent as they leave behind them ...

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