Birds on Record

A mock animated documentary about the ecological plight of penguins in the Antarctic, possibly foretelling cataclysmic results for the rest of the world.

A body is floating in the water. A strange bird is calling and memories come alive again. "Where were you when I was in despair?", asks the friend.

Su Rynard's wide-ranging and contemplative documentary THE MESSENGER explores our deep-seated connection to birds and warns that the uncertain fate of songbirds might mirror our own. Moving from the northern reaches of the Boreal Forest to the base of Mount Ararat in Turkey to the streets of New Yor

In the remote Darién Gap rainforest, indigenous communities face the advance of loggers and cattle ranchers, an existential threat to their way of life and the ecosystem upon which they rely. When a rare Harpy Eagle nest is discovered near their community, the Emberá tribe of Playa Mue

Are condors more closely related to hawks or to storks? New research constantly changes our understanding of how birds are related to each other. At the Field Museum, Shannon Hackett, John Bates, and Dave Willard keep close eyes on avian systematics, the study of evolutionary relationships among bir

Halfway between poetry, ornithology and improvised music, this film is an appointment, a meeting of sorts that begins 6000 km apart between Lisbon and Montreal, and foremost a conversation between two neighbours. The very result of a trip to Portugal for one and faraway reminiscences for the other.

A journey into the kingdom of Jujurana, one of the most vulnerable pheasants on our planet, residing in the backdrop of extreme socio-political pressures exerted on a beautiful temperate and subalpine forest landscape. The red faced, blue-wattled, horned male of the species is a gorgeous pheasant, m

A short film about agression and escalation.

Replication in "contemporary society is characterized by the loss of data, degradation, and noise." (Lev Manovich) Reproducing original watercolors for The Birds of America—which were augmented with friable pastel, chalk, and crayon—caused the naturalist John James Audubon (born Jean Rab

A wise birdwoman sends three birds to guide a girl into the dark unknown landscapes of her inner world.

Is it a bird, is it a plane? Shot in the desert of Dubai, Shaheen examines the relationship between bird and human and how humans have used technology to try to recreate wild hunting. Shaheen follows the morning routine of the falcons of the Royal Shaheen group. The falconers Peter and Sarab attempt

This poetic and evocative visual study takes the viewer on a journey into the world of pigeon flying high above the bustling and crowded streets of Old Delhi.

Jean lives as a hermit in a forest. From his cabin, he listens to and records the sounds of the animals that inhabit the surrounding area. One night, he hears the cry of an unknown animal. Along with Mana, a young girl who sings with the birds, he goes in search of the mysterious creature.

Synopsis: "It's a bird in the air, a bird that lands (...) The deep mystery, the promise of life (...) It's nothing at all." - Jobim/Moustaki - Note of intent: At once simple, profound and light-hearted, this film is a play on words; a deliberative game and puzzle.

Tracing Birds in Isolation is a hand processed and printed 16mm film that starts somewhere resembling a traditional field study of sea birds then ascends through the color spectrum into a psychedelic technicolor frenzy of flying forms, that swoop and glide as their abstracted forms merge into one an

The first episode of a documentary mini series about Kuwait. In her 'mockumentray' mini-series, Bird Watch, Zahra examines mundane and common interest topics from a marginalized, alienated perspective to reveal hidden truths about health, the myth of origins, gender, and the business of philanthropy

Gustavo Londoño hunts birds' nests in the Manú National Park in Peru. He rigs them with cameras to identify what predators eat eggs and chicks. His research results suggest surprising challenges that some birds will face as the region warms further. Director | Daniel Grossman Editor |

An immigrant in New York tries to become a Scarlet Ibis (Eudocimus ruber) bird, so that she can travel back to the Caribbean for her child's birthday party.

A poetic study of a hummingbird in flight captured and eco-processed on 16mm.

Do the chirps of birds wake you up every morning? That's the case in our house and after long enough, we decided to listen to what they were saying. Due to urbanization, many birds may not have had a choice in moving in; but with the help of research we discover the power of change homeowners yield

The Golden Cage (2022) video is part of a media installation based on the northern bald ibis (a.k.a "kelaynak" in Turkish), the most endangered migratory bird in the Middle East. When Palmyra fell to ISIS, the kelaynak colony, which migrates from Northeast Africa to Birecik (a small town near the Tu

Ornithologists at Edwards Lab, Harvard University collect birds, extract RNAs and DNAs, and sequence their genes to study bird epidemics and genetic evolutions.

Passerine in Time exists in a space where two creatures and two distinct worlds collide, where the bird is trapped by virtual objects in space on a journey of desire towards its nesting grounds.A journey guided by compasses and perceptions beyond our comprehension.

Brothers Saud and Nadeem were raised looking at a sky speckled with black kites, watching as relatives tossed meat up to these birds of prey. Muslim belief held that feeding the kites would expel troubles. Now, birds are falling from the polluted, opaque skies of New Delhi and the two brothers have

Claude Conseil lives with her husband in a house in the middle of the woods. She spends her time listening to birds. One day, mysterious phone calls break the calm of the forest.

The concept of "One for Sorrow" is to immerse viewers in the experience of an "augur", accompanying them on a journey where destiny can be read through the birds. It begins with observing them as others would, until entering a trance-like state where their flights become signs.

A creative documentary exploring our relationship with nature. Young birdwatchers, Mya and Arjun, feel the pressure of climate change and the biodiversity crisis greatly. Although they feel isolated and judged by others, they are determined to stand up for what they believe in; coming of age in the

On a remote island in the future people are preparing for an important mission.

Birdlime: a sticky tar which is used to trap wild birds for export or trade. After narrowly escaping being trapped in the exotic bird-trade industry, an unfortunate fowl still ends up caged and corrupted by unfamiliar stimuli.

The story of two birds: one living in the forest, the other in a town flower shop. Once they meet, they realize they want to be together.

A woman discovers a passion for bird-watching during her pandemic isolation, which leads to an appreciation for the natural world that exists in the midst of the concrete jungle. As the birds—including a particular pair of plovers—fight for survival, she's committed to protecting their h

A birdwatcher tries to record the scarce birdsongs in a deactivated mining area, while a team of ethnobotanists faces the challenges of storing one of the largest natural history collections in the world. Scientific practices from the past and present meet in the investigation of a 17th century cata

NIGHTINGALES IN BERLIN featuring David Rothenberg, Cymin Samawatie, Lembe Lokk, Korhan Erel, Benedicte Maurseth, Wassim Mukdad, Sanna Salmenkallio, Dietmar Todt, Tina Roeske, and others. This films tells the extraordinary story of professor David Rothenberg's efforts to cross the species line and ma

After losing his arm in an accident, Willie Wright Junior finds his passion again by flying pigeons. – DeWitt Davis

In winter, starlings join in flocks of thousands of individuals to try to confuse the hawks that attack them, doing a mesmerizing dance. This film it's part of the Ornitographies photographic project. This project focuses on birds in order to capture in a single time frame, the shapes that generates

On a Cuban rooftop, a single father creates a nest for his son and a hundred pigeons. Once the pigeons have wings, they fly away - however, they return. But what about his son? En una azotea cubana un padre soltero crea un nido para su hijo y cien palomas. En cuanto las palomas tengan alas, se ir&aa

The singular beauty of wild nature is hard to understand. Working in thickets on a thin strip of land between the sea and the lake, bird researchers try to at least describe it setting off on their expeditions regardless of bad weather and difficult conditions. PRODUCTION CREDITS Script: Aniela Gabr

Arecibo, the world's largest radio telescope, is located in Esperanza, Puerto Rico, which is also home to a critically endangered species of parrots. The telescope functions as an ear that is capable of capturing signs of extraterrestrial intelligence. The witty messages from the parrots remain unno

A filmmaker abroad phones their brother and chat about the Asian koel, whose early-morning and evening calls are a feature of Singapore's soundscape.

Native Hawaiian birds were fundamental in forming the Hawaiian Islands as we know them. However, today, Hawaii is known as the extinction capital of the world with a high percentage of its native birds threatened. This film showcases many different native species as they receive care at the Hawaii W

The unconventional documentary "O" exposes the intriguing fascination for the Egg. O is set in the twentieth century, when the German ornithologist Max Schönwetter devotes himself to his life's work: the scientific handbook of the egg. While he frantically collects and studies 19.206 eggs and corre

Cormie, a double-crested cormorant, loves money. She loves chasing money, catching money, and if you're not careful, stealing money. Part mockumentary, part true-life tale, "Cormie," reveals the heart of a rescue center working hard to save wildlife in the small coastal town of Astoria, Oregon. As h

The line between reality and imagination becomes blurred with the resurrection of birds and the creation of a hybrid bestiary. Two artists are working at the periphery of the male dominated world of taxidermy. Interweaving their ornate art of resurrecting roadkill with archival footage of colonial h

A bird called Memory has forgotten how to fly back home. Lua, a trans woman, tries to find Memory in the streets of Rio de Janeiro, but the city can be a hostile place.

Centuries prior to the colonization of the Americas, Purple Martins began to nest in gourds that people hung to store food and water and became companion species for many tribes. The birds that European settlers brought with them drove Purple Martins out of their wild habitats so that now they can o

Quo vadis, bird? Ulu Braun`s film BIRDS looks at the life of birds in urban habitats. They apply their instinctive behaviour to the developed environment. What role do humans play therein? Bags and umbrellas become bushes, buildings become monoliths and people become organisms. The birds are forced

Honeycreeper is a short film that is part of the larger series of Speculative Speciation: Artificial Anagenesis and Creative Cladogenesis by Jacklyn Brickman and Dr. Sharon Gill, 2023-24. Since the 1600s, more than 160 species of birds have gone extinct. Not only are those extinctions profound losse

Nesma is at odds with the world around her since her father's death. She escapes to the rooftops where she secretly cares for her late father's birds against the knowledge of her mother and competing against the boy on the opposite rooftop. Now Nesma must face even bigger challenges as she enters wo

As temperatures warm due to climate change, the extent of Arctic sea ice decreases. As a result, horned and tufted puffins have been spotted migrating to Northwest Greenland. This has never before been documented.

The second film in a trilogy of works which observe ecosystems bordering urban San Diego. A flock of Cliff Swallows oscillates between their nest along the Interstate 5 Freeway, and the San Dieguito River. The video is made up of triptych compositions of the birds' flight, their nests on the freeway

When the world turns upside down, we have a choice to firmly hang on to old ideas or embrace the new view. In Chasing Birds we follow a little girl who playfully chases a bird throughout a chaotic and transformational period. Chasing Birds is a story about disconnection between people and how change

On a bare rock by the ocean you will never hear anything but birds whose cries blend with the sound of winds' is a tonal work on the construction of ecologies as image practice emergent contemporaneously with traditions of photographic and filmic image making, and the maintenance of colonial spectac

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For Shawn Hayes, the ancient practice of falconry is more than a deep connection with raptors. It's his life's work, carving a place for himself where people of color haven't always been welcome.

In 2025, five rare Palila finches survive in the wild and a woman journeys to Hawaii, the Extinction Capital of the World, to see the last few birds. Through animation and live-action footage, the film explores how a species is preserved by man as it nears extinction by looking at past and present e

Babash is a parrot who speaks mostly Farsi but sometimes mixes English and Azeri into his conversations. A singular language resulting from the place where he lives: a house in Los Angeles shared with an Iranian family. The same place where Behrouz Rae developed a friendship with Babash ov

An old lady finds an injured bird. She takes care of him and gives him shelter. They quickly make friends with each other. One day the bird finds out that he is in danger: in the other room the old lady keeps hundreds of birds, locked in cages.

A visit from a bird is a film essay that arises from a process of grief, an exploration of the search for presence from absence. It focuses on the close observation of the birds that inhabit the Seville landscape, filming the empty spaces, the gestures and the environment that accompany me after the

P L U M E responds to a 2019 State of Canada's Birds Report issued by Environment and Climate Change Canada alerting that the diversity and abundance of Canada's birds are in sharp decline. Thinking about this report and the effects of climate change and our interconnectedness with the natural world

Important Bird Opera (music and film by Ryan Moritz with a libretto by Anjuli Raza Kolb) is an experimental opera in three acts about birds, migration, climate crisis, and rewilding. The piece began as an experiment in nature photography, sound documentary, and the twentieth-century tone poem. Built

This film sheds light on the current situation of songbirds in Europe. Female actors and singers represent various endangered bird species who reflect on current society, its ecological and economic structures as well as their view of the environment, and ask how far human treatment of nature affect

Follow the migration of tiny, ground-nesting birds from a New York farm field to Argentina and back, with noted Bobolink-chaser Noah Perlut.

Anyone who feels a shiver run down their spines at the colorfully dazzling collections of dead butterflies attached to boards in museums will likely recognize a persistent unease in Michael Heindl's Drawing from Nature . It relates to the relationship between humans and so-called nature. In three st

Eclipse, is a site-responsive video installation with spatial sound design (7'05" loop), dimensions variable. The work commemorates a lost species: the passenger pigeon, whose once massive population went extinct 100 years ago. As of the mid-19th Century, this dove-like bird was the most abundant bi

On a small island crowned with sharp cliffs, a single house looks out to sea. Obsessed by the dream that humans may one day fly like birds, an inventor experiments with his machines on this parcel of abandoned land. For this man, only a pure, light, and naive person would be capable of this feat. Re

This museum portrait takes us on a journey through the various galleries of the Falcon Hospital in Abu Dhabi, including the ICU where living falcons receive treatment. Along the way, we stop to greet the desert owl and the gazelles—both living and immortalized in statues—adding depth to

Enter into the ultra-adventurous world of pilot-biologists chasing wild birds in the no-man's-land north of the arctic circle. Their world is one of beauty and grit, humor and science. The tundra swans they study are magnificent creatures, traveling to both sides of the straight of Beringia, the thi

A TV presenter tries to engage with crows in the local park. After her first rendezvous with a crow she finds herself unexpectedly emotional. Nevertheless she continuous to meet crows in the park. It seems impossible to establish a relationship between her as a human and the crows.

Coffee farms in Colombia exist in some of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet. However, agriculture is putting pressure on that biodiversity that is causing catastrophic declines in migratory bird species. Farmers are working alongside Smithsonian scientists to come up with solutions that w

First conceived in 2023 at Ecopoetics Workshop in Sottochiesa, Italy, In the Air is a generative instrument based on recordings of local bird calls. Using Max/MSP, a visual programming software for musicians and multimedia artists, I began by analyzing the incoming "notes" of a selected birdsong, as

Birds-of-paradise, adorned with their most beautiful plumage, bring us to their forest suddenly disrupted by human disorder.

Tethering falconry and motherhood, Freya weaves together themes of death and magic, where seasons re-arrange, just as myth and memory are re-cast through a childhood spell.

An intimate portrait of master falconer Rodney Stotts and his mission to build a bird sanctuary to provide access to nature for his stressed community. The film weaves Rodney's present-day mission with the story of his past, and examines their roots in social and environmental injustice. The Falcone

Bev's back garden is nothing like yours - it is actually the only pigeon rescue in Bristol, UK. The Alice in Wonderland themed green space is host to all kinds of pigeons (even some exotic ones!) that are being nursed back to health. No matter how unpopular pigeons are, they - like all other animals

As Grey Falls wanders along the dikes and mudflats of the Fraser River delta, the shared home of millions of birds and some 2 million people in southern British Columbia. It is a place of great beauty, and one that has been grievously damaged and transformed by humans over the past 175 years. Yet st

Killing the Messengers combines ancient mythology and modern ornithology to focus on birds as omens, as trackers of climate degradation, pollution and habitat loss. Set on the Greek island of Antikythera where thousands of migratory birds rest and refuel before continuing their journeys across the M

A short film which centres upon the proliferation of bird houses, erected to attract the Purple Martin - 'America's Most Wanted Bird'. The extraordinary abundance of man-made habitats reflects a desire to live in close proximity to nature, in a suburban, small town setting. Over one million North Am

Meet Susan "Seabird Sue" Schubel, a seabird biologist and decoy maker, part of Audubon's Seabird Institute which today replicates more than two dozen bird species decoys for conservation projects around the world.

In a coach station, around 2am, a collection of lonely and tired travelers are waiting for the coach. Somehow, in that cold and depressing place, the resident pigeons manage to create a magical connection between them for a beautiful instant.

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