The Bird People

I had hoped to watch The Bird People again before writing this blog, but it's never at checkout...and so the time has come to blog anyway...

To me, The Bird People is a both a science and a natural history film. (I actually question the reasoning behind structuring our genre of filmmaking - "science and natural history filmmaking" - around the distinction of "science" versus "natural history" films. It seems like a somewhat problematic set of labels. For instance, aren't all natural history films also science films? isn't natural history a subset of science?) That being said, films like The Bird People and Roger Tiech's Devil's Teeth and The Man in the Grey Suit fit into our genre of documentary filmmaking (however it is you choose to label it). I guess I'm a little surprised how often we feel the need to apply an additional label - "experimental." These films aren't particularly avant-garde, but because they don't imitate the style of generic natural history films, we label them experimental. We are comfortable calling A Moose Named Madeline (Phil's movie) a natural history film, but we call Devil's Teeth an experimental natural history film. If it isn't cliche, it must be experimental? I don't think it's quite as simple as that, but I do fear that our categories are too narrowly defined. (And, to be clear, I don't think "experimental" is a derogatory term at all...just misapplied on occasion.)

Now that I've gotten that out of my system, here's my take on what seems like the most misunderstood aspect of The Bird People: the strange, deep voice you hear throughout the film is the voice of the birds themselves! They say something like "We watch you, watching us" early in the film...and my favorite piece of bird-speak, "Bodies go in, knowledge comes out!" during one of the museum sections. It makes perfect sense, if you think about it. Gitlin films the birds in such a way that they look like alien creatures, in close-up with weird colors and strange movement. And so, when he gives them a voice, they have a deep, Godly tone.

I first saw The Bird People sometime in 2005. Seeing it then was an interesting experience: Michael Gitlin had come to Cornell Cinema to talk about his film, Cornell's Lab of Ornithology had very recently rediscovered the ivory-billed woodpecker, and I was working in an ornithology lab (doing entomology stuff) and thus strangely immersed in upstate New York birder culture. I was also just beginning to feel disillusioned with the idea of a career in science, and starting to consider filmmaking as an alternative. At the time, I liked the film, but didn't completely know what to think about it. It was one of the only natural history films I had seen that didn't fall into the stereotype. And yet, all the science is there: mist-netting, field research, collecting, comparative anatomy, conservation biology. Watching it again recently, I realize that The Bird People is an incredibly solid film. Maybe it's not as accessible as March of the Penguins, but I think it's quite an achievement to make an artistic film, while still being true to the science and culture of birding.