Travelling Birds

‘An adventure in flight. ‘A spectacle that’s beyond beautiful’
-FilmInc Magazine.
Rated G RT 85 mins. Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary 2003

Preceded by
Vengeance
10 minute short
Winner of the 1998 AFI Award for Animation.

Screening 2.30, 5.00 & 7.15 pm on
Wednesday 18 February

TAKE 450 people many of them biologists. Divide them into five teams. Have these teams visit every continent in 53 expeditions spread over 3 years. Mix in 15 cameramen and, wait for it, 17 pilots. Oh and there’s $45 million Australian. What have you got? The wildlife doco ‘Travelling Birds’ that’s what.

Crows don’t get a beak in. This pic focuses on the aces, the top guns of the bird world. Species that think nothing of flying thousands of kilometres from one hemisphere to the other and back again every year guided only by the stars, the sun, the earth’s gravitational field and familiar landmarks.

But a Zoology lesson it isn’t. The narration (by a co-director with a heavy French accent sounding much like Renee in ‘Hello, Hello’) is sparse. It’s the visuals that make this so breathtaking a film to watch. No CGI were used. So the shots you see ranging from the Antarctic to the Arctic Circle via the snow-bound Himalayas and the Manhattan Island jungle reflect the ingenuity of the many cinematographers.

Helicopters, ultra-lights, motorised parachutes and hot-air balloons were all pressed into service to capture the images. The ‘you are there’ effect, an effect that first surfaced in Carol Ballard’s ‘Fly Away Home’ in 1996, is very much in evidence. But ‘Le Peuple Migrateur’, its original title, goes one better. The viewer of this pic ends up feeling like a goose.

Jacques Parrin was a co-director and co-producer. His previous outing was ‘Microcosmos’ in which insects were given a similar treatment.

‘Travelling Birds’ An adventure in flight. ‘A spectacle that’s beyond beautiful’-FilmInc Magazine. Rated G RT 85 mins. Academy Award nominee for Best Documentary 2003. Screening 18 February at 2.30, 5.00 & 7.15 PM

Wendy Chandler’s 10 minute short ‘Vengeance’ about a goanna with attitude will screen beforehand. Winner of the 1998 AFI Award for Animation.

NEXT MONTH
Swimming Pool
(aka ‘La Piscine’)

A celebrated mystery writer, suffering from bad case of writer’s block, escapes to a villa owned by her publisher in the south of France. Her re-vitalisation is rudely interrupted by the unannounced arrival of the publisher’s daughter. A teenager whose predilection for noisy, casual sex and topless sunbathing stretches the nerves of the middle-aged, prudish writer to breaking point. It soon appears however that there’s more to the relationship between these two characters than incompatibility.

The pic? ‘Swimming Pool’ (aka ‘La Piscine’) The Director? Francois Ozon. The Writer? Charlotte Rampling. The Teenager? Ludivine Sagnier. The Publisher? Charles Dance. The Screening? 3 March at 2.30, 5.00 and 7.15 PM.
Rated M RT 102 mins In French with English subtitles. Don’t miss it!

 

AUBREY CANNON'S MOVIE
Rio Bravo (1959)
Wednesday 11 February

at the Noosa Heads Bowls Club
from 7pm

 

NOTES ON THE SOCIETY'S PREVIOUS SCREENING
Japanese Story
Wednesday 6 February

‘SOME stories can change your life’. Is ‘Japanese Story’ one of them? Director Sue Brooks hopes so. To convince you she‘s gathered some good people around her. Alison Tilson (screenplay) and Elizabeth Drake (score).

These two worked on Brooks’ ‘The Road to Nhill’ in 97. Ian Baker (DOP). And Jill Bilcock. (Bilcock is perhaps Australia’s best Editor. She lists ‘Strictly Ballroom’, ‘Romeo + Juliet’ and ‘Moulin Rouge’ - all Luhrmann’s pics - on her CV as well as ‘Strictly Ballroom’, ‘Muriel’s Wedding’ and ‘The Road to Perdition’).

A career-best performance from Toni Collette as the no-nonsense geologist Sandy Clarke who ends up falling in love with her client does no harm either. All the ingredients, in other words, to make a picture that works. 107 mins

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