Planet Mosaic en France

From 1000 cows to 1000 springs

The name is misleading because, in local patois, the original expression meant 1000 springs, not 1000 cows. At the time of “1000 springs”, thousands of cows could have grazed on the Plateau de Millevaches (Plateau of 1000 cows) because the area was covered in vast meadows. Now, in these days of “1000 cows”, it is much less hospitable to grazing animals, as the entire plateau has been taken over by another species, the Douglas fir. The straight, red wood produced by these trees is highly valued by furniture makers and has become the centre of a new industry that provides jobs for foresters, lumberjacks and pruners. Our film looks at the daily lives of the plateau’s forestry workers who, when clinging to the trunks of these tall trees, may come across another occupant of the high canopy, the Eurasian penduline tit, a migratory bird that was spotted in the Limousin for the very first time while we were filming.

_ici_menu_france
Back See the photos of the shoot

These sequences have been combined into a single film with other sequences from the Kainuu region of Finland, an area that is amazingly similar to the Limousin. Two years were spent shuttling between two regions more than 3000-km apart. This film is a bonus extract from the four films made in the Rhône-Alpes, Provence-Alpes Côte d’Azur, Midi-Pyrénées and Brittany Regions (4 x 52 minutes + 4 x 30 minutes bonus).