Chicken Ranch

The documentary goes inside a brothel in Nevada. The place is called the Chicken Ranch. Prostitution is legal in the state and the house is licensed. The camera stays there for a long stretch. The telling rests largely on observation. No commentary steps in. The women who work there wait for customers in the parlour. The rates are negotiated in the same room. In their time off they talk among themselves. What they earn is split fifty fifty with the house. On top of that they pay rent. They spend three weeks of the month working there. Many of them are looking for a way out. The seventy four minute documentary was directed by Nick Broomfield and Sandi Sissel. It is a British and American co-production finished in 1983.