Blackrabbit images is a production company for documentary films from Muenster, Germany. We produce creative films that highlight the human-animal relationship, subcultures and activism.
Marc Pierschel is a filmmaker and author from Muenster, Germany. After studying sociology and cultural studies, he filmed Edge – Perspectives on Drug Free Culture, a documentary about the American youth subculture of straight edge.
In 2013, Live and Let Live followed – a documentary about the human-animal relationship and the history of the vegan movement. The film deals with the current debate on the morality of livestock farming and its impact on the environment and human health, and illuminates the essential perspectives in an impressive and emotionally subtle way. Half financed by crowdfunding, the film ran nationwide in cinemas as well as at film festivals in Germany, Italy and Austria. In 2014, the film was picked up by world sales agency mindjazz pictures international and in 2016 released worldwide on Netflix.
In the summer of 2015, Marc Pierschel accompanied the Berlin activist group Hard To Port on a two-week campaign against commercial whaling in Iceland. The resulting documentation, 184, lends insight into the work of the activists, who are trying to document the brutal whale hunt off the coasts of Iceland.
In his film The End of Meat, Pierschel continues the ideas and reflections from Live and Let Live and raises the question of a meatless world. Eighty percent financed through crowdfunding, the film was released in German cinemas by mindjazz pictures, in Austria by docs, in Switzerland by Outside the Box, in the US and Canada by Gravitas Ventures and in Australia and New Zealand by Fighting Chance Films.
His latest film is a return to the farmed animal sanctuary in the north of Germany that appeared in Live and Let Live. Butenland tells the story of Jan Gerdes, a farmer turned activist, and of Karin Mück, who liberated dogs and cats from vivisection laboratories in northern Germany in the 1980s. Together they created ‘Hof Butenland‘ – a farm that became a sanctuary for former farmed animals. Butenland was also a successful crowdfunding project and was released in German cinemas by mindjazz pictures on February 6, 2020 and in Austria via Polyfilm on March 6. It is available on VOD/DVD since June 12.