BIRDPEOPLE

If you saw the box-office hit WINGED MIGRATION, you might have wondered how the camera got so close to its subjects that it seemed to fly with them. Jacques Perrin's astonishingly beautiful film about the world's disappearing migratory birds was made possible by twenty people who devoted four years of their lives to raising the film's rare swans, geese, ducks and pelicans to be unafraid of motorized vehicles. BIRDPEOPLE goes behind-the-scenes to chronicle the daily successes and failures of the handlers as they tend to eggs, feed goslings and use ultralights to teach them to take off. Eventually the charges travel to the far corners of the globe with their trainers to do for the camera that which they were born to do--fly.

The entire process relies on a bird's imprinting to a human as its parent when it hatches, thus requiring the dedicated individuals to spend day and night for months in the company of the birds. They are, surprisingly, not ornithologists, nor in some cases even especially fond of birds. But caring for and teaching these animals at the Bois-Roger farm in Normandy, France dramatically influences the direction of their lives. The fowl are curious, smart and occasionally ornery, and their humans display similar traits in their eventual forays back into society.

BIRDPEOPLE documents a rare symbiotic connection between humans and animals and the tests to their bonds encountered while traveling to exotic locales.

Agnes Varnum

Eduard Erne was born in 1958 in Bregenz, Austria, and studied directing at the Mozarteum in Salzburg. He has worked in the theater as an actor and director in Vienna and Frankfurt am Main. He has lived in Frankfurt am Main since 1985. His films include ZEDAKA (2003) and FOREVER YOUNG AND YOUTHFUL (2002).

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Germany

Sunday 6/19 at 3:00 p.m.

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