Film Screenings: Unnatural History of the Kakapo, Ghost Bird

The Unnatural History of the Kakapo

Sunday, March 25, 2012, 2 p.m.

Blackstone Library, Branford

This is a story about a family living with a terrible curse. Adults are plagued by infertility and the young are vulnerable to disease. But this family is no stranger to adversity; they are a family of kakapo. Once thought extinct, they’re now the world’s rarest and strangest wild parrot.

Today there’s only one breeding population left in the entire world and the normally guarded conservation project that protects it has opened its doors and given a documentary maker unprecedented access to the Kakapo Recovery Program. The timing is perfect, modern science thinks they’ve uncovered the reason behind the curse and the recovery team think they’ve found a way to lift it.

With the help of a Spanish avian artificial insemination expert, some old men and a team of dedicated conservationists and rangers, a cure is almost within reach. But the battle to save the kakapo is far from over and the kakapo themselves still have a hand to play.

Ghost Bird 

Sunday, April 22, 2012, 2 p.m.

Blackstone Library, Branford

Set in a murky swamp overrun with birders, scientists, and reporters, Ghost Bird explores the limits of certainty, the seductive power of hope, and how one phantom woodpecker changed a sleepy Southern town forever.

In 2005, scientists announced that the Ivory-billed woodpecker, a species thought to be extinct for 60 years, had been found in the swamps of Eastern Arkansas. Now six years later, the woodpecker remains as elusive as ever. Ghost Bird brings the Ivory-bill’s blurry rediscovery into focus revealing our uneasy relationship with nature and the increasing uncertainty of our place within it.

Ghost Bird is being screened again because the December showing was suspended due to a flawed DVD. 

These films are cosponsored by Audubon Connecticut.

(From the March 2012 Newsletter)