Purchase your tickets and set your alarms for this Sunday, November 24th at 7pm GMT, for the worldwide on-line premier of the award-winning environmental documentary, Birdsong. The movie, directed by Kathleen Harris, follows ornithologist Seán Ronayne in his epic quest to document the calls of all of the chicken species in Eire. Tickets (€12) embrace the printed adopted by Q&A with Seán, with a further on-demand entry via December 1st.
Kathleen, who had been a video journalist on the Irish Instances, contacted Seán in 2022 with the intention of interviewing him for a portrait video sequence on folks with attention-grabbing jobs. As Seán saved operating off digicam to search out the birds that caught his ear, Kathleen rapidly realized that there was the potential for a a lot larger story. She is drawn to tales that discover the connection with the pure world, and to tales that may use the non-public to speak a few a lot larger matter. On this case, greater than half of Eire’s practically 200 chicken species are pink or amber-listed (endangered or of conservation concern)—a proven fact that made Seán’s challenge a race towards time. Kathleen left her job on the paper and spent the following yr making this movie.
Whereas the surroundings is visible gorgeous, it’s Seán’s ardour that’s the driving drive behind the movie. At the same time as a baby, he was all the time happiest in nature. Like many who’re obsessed by a single slender matter and discover socialization difficult, Seán is on the autism spectrum, a proven fact that he solely discovered as an grownup, via a journey urged by his accomplice, Alba Novell Capdevila. His hypersensitivity to sound labored (and continues to work) as a superpower. Seán units up microphones throughout, together with two that had been operating continuous for 3 years. Doing evaluation of hundreds upon hundreds of recordings gave him a depth of data that permits him to select particular person birds within the midst of a refrain of sound.
Seán Ronaye
With restricted expertise in longer works, Kathleen enlisted Ross Whitaker to be producer for the movie, and he helped determine markers and beats throughout the hours of footage. There is no such thing as a narrator, and the work is pushed by Seán phrases and actions. Though there’s a message of hope, the statistics for Irish birds are grim. Seán famous that though Eire thinks of itself as “The Emerald Isle,” roughly 2/3 is improved agricultural grassland — not habitat for most of the native species, and “not the inexperienced you need.” One heart-breaking section focuses on the try and document the Ring ouzel (Turdus torquatus). Seán left a recorder buried within the heath for 3 months, after which sat by his pc to scan via the sonographs. Whereas the mission was a hit, the ouzels had been the final confirmed pair in the whole nation. “It’s the sound of extinction,” Seán mentioned.
The film concludes with breath-taking pictures and sound of a starling murmuration. The mass of birds, with their close to instantaneously adjustments within the path, are complicated to predators. Collectively, the wingbeats sound just like the pounding of a waterfall.
The movie has a attain far past birders. It’s gorgeously shot, and can attraction to anybody who loves nature documentaries alongside the traces of Planet Earth. Filming ranged from the karst panorama within the Burren area, to Donegal within the northwest, to the seabird colonies on the Skellig islands. All through, Seán finds locations which are fragments of hope, sections of wildness that might kind the beginning of labor to convey nature again.
Just like the award-winning movie Free Solo, which profiled rock climber Alex Honnald on his quest to be the primary to carry out a free solo climb of El Capitan in California’s Yosemite Nationwide park, Birdsong focuses on one individual’s drive to finish one thing far past the unusual — and in studying from that, there’s an attraction for all of us.
To be taught extra:
Seán maintains a free database of Irish soundscapes, Irishwildlifesounds.com, and an album of Irish soundscape tracks. His memoir, Nature Boy: A Journey of Birdsong and Belonging , was printed this fall. A lecture, “Now What? How can we shield one thing we don’t love and don’t perceive?,” given at The Convention and Media Evolution in Sweden, is out there on YouTube.