Directed by Deborah Dickson • Documentary • With Todd McGrain, Andrew Stern • 2012 • 56 minutes
Gone and nearly forgotten in extinction, the Labrador Duck, the Great Auk, the Heath Hen, the Carolina Parakeet, and the Passenger Pigeon leave holes not just in the North American landscape but in our collective memories. Moved by their stories, sculptor Todd McGrain set out to create memorials to the lost birds—to bring their vanished forms back into the world. The Lost Bird Project follows the road-trip that McGrain and his brother-in-law, Andy Stern, take as they search for the locations where the birds were last seen in the wild and negotiate for permission to install McGrain’s large bronze sculptures there. McGrain’s aim in placing the sculptures is to give presence to the birds where they are now so starkly absent. “These birds are not commonly known,” he says, “and they ought to be, because forgetting is another kind of extinction. It’s such a thorough erasing.”
The Lost Bird Project is a film about public art, extinction and memory. It is an elegy to five extinct North American birds and a thoughtful, moving, sometimes humorous look at the artist and his mission.
Up Next in New Day Films
-
25 Texans in the Land of Lincoln
Directed by Ellen Brodsky • Documentary • With Professor Teresa Van Hoy, Priscilla Reyes, Eric Villalpando • 2019 • 33 minutes
Twenty-five history students from St. Mary’s University take a 2,000 mile bus trip from the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas to Springfield, Illinois to build a Day of the De...
-
How To Power A City
Directed by Melanie La Rosa • Documentary • With Costa Constantinides, Juan Shannon, Thomas Meyer • 2024 • 73 minutes
"How To Power A City" is a singular film as the first clean energy documentary that puts communities at the center. It showcases local solutions in the US and Puerto Rico, while ...
-
Benevolence, A Journey From Prison to...
Directed by Joanne Hershfield • Documentary • 2018 • 62 minutes
Benevolence, a Journey from Prison to Home follows the journey of five women as they are released from prison and move onto Benevolence Farm in Alamance County, NC. Benevolence Farm is a working farm that serves as a transitional ho...
