“Bird’s-eye view” in the cinema: The great extinction of species. – Culture

Are all the birds already there? Are you kidding me? Are you serious when you say that. One in eight bird species in the world is threatened with extinction, a massive disappearance that hardly anyone notices. Don’t the tits breed in the garden like they do every year? And didn’t herons even peck for fish at the lake recently? birds are everywhere, in the hedges, on roofs and trees, in the country and in the city. The fact that there are still fewer and fewer, that Germany has lost almost half of its birds in the last 60 years, is not immediately apparent, you have to know it.

Jörg Adolph, who was last in “The Secret Life of Trees” was inauguratedby Peter Wohlleben, the author of the book of the same name, can be found in his documentary now fascinated by the birds. You don’t have to be a wily one to appreciate their beauty birdwatcher be. Adolph often shows the animals in slow motion and up close, the filmmaker’s telephoto lens replacing the ornithologist’s binoculars. And such binoculars “not only magnify, they put the viewer into the world of birds,” explains Arnulf Conradi, a former publisher and bird-mad since childhood.

With him and Norbert Schäffer, ornithologist and chairman of the State Association for Bird and Nature Conservation in Bavaria (LBV), Adolph has found two bird nerds who serve as mediators. For his previous films, Adolph had already accompanied people who were passionate about their cause, such as the publisher Gerhard Steidl in “How to Make a Book with Steidl”, the theater maker Christian Stückl in “The Great Passion” or the psychologist Dietmar Langer in the controversial documentary “Elternschule”.

In beautiful, poetic texts, which he recorded himself, Conradi talks about his passion for birds: observing them is “more of a way of life than a hobby – you actually do it all the time”. And that this observation forms a “vertical line in time”. You are completely in the here and now. However, the central protagonist of “bird perspectives” is Norbert Schäffer, the LBV chairman. Adolph accompanies him on his mission to save the birds: to the Donaumoos for a press conference with the Bavarian Prime Minister or when creating press releases and posts on social media.

Schäffer is not a charismatic like Conradi, but a great bird lover with in-depth specialist knowledge, and a media professional who knows how to win people over to his cause. Accompanying him gives an insight into the small details of species protection, the tough, tedious work. The fact that birds are well-liked, but many species are also shy and inconspicuous, does not make things any easier. Schäffer has a special relationship with the corncrake, for example, but the grey-brown bird, which is almost invisible in tall grass, is no “poster boy of species protection”. It’s easier for the bearded vultures Wally and Bavaria, whose release, accompanied by a lot of media fanfare, the Movie accompanied in detail.

Open detailed view

“Bird perspectives” sometimes seems a bit unfocused, flies from the Lummensprung in Heligoland (please google!), to the migratory birds in Africa, then back to Schäffer or to the Uckermark, where Conradi lives. The fascination for the ubiquitous, yet so different air creatures holds the film together – and the warning that their slow death must also be a warning to us humans.

In doing so, the film maintains a distance, both literally and figuratively. Even when he draws the viewer into the world of birds, they always remain alien. How can a cuckoo feel like a cuckoo when he’s being raised by surrogate parents who are very different from him? How do flocks of birds fly? When thousands of starlings climb up together and twitch back and forth as a swarm, dancing almost and collision-free like a single large organism, it is an intoxicating natural spectacle. It stimulates the philosophizing bird lover Conradi to fundamental considerations. “An old human question is: Does nature play? Here it seems to do it.”

Bird perspectives, Germany 2022 – director, script: Jörg Adolph. Camera: Daniel Schoenauer. Editing: Anja Pohl. Rental: Film Pearls, 106 minutes.