$15 General Admission, $12 Member, $7 child age 14 or younger
Doors Open for admissions 30 min. prior to screening Buy tickets at Film Center or online now
Su Rynard’s wide-ranging and contemplative documentary THE MESSENGER explores our deep-seated connection to birds and warns that the uncertain fate of songbirds might mirror our own. Moving from the northern reaches of the Boreal Forest to the base of Mount Ararat in Turkey to the streets of New York, THE MESSENGER brings us face-to-face with a remarkable variety of human-made perils that have devastated thrushes, warblers, orioles, tanagers, grosbeaks and many other airborne music-makers.
On one level, THE MESSENGER is an engaging, visually stunning, emotional journey, one that mixes its elegiac message with hopeful notes and unique glances into the influence of songbirds on our own expressions of the soul. On another level, THE MESSENGER is the artful story about the mass depletion of songbirds on multiple continents, and about those who are working to turn the tide.
In ancient times humans looked to the flight and songs of birds to protect the future. Today once again, birds have something to tell us.
Post-screening discussion led by Joan Walsh.
Joan has been watching, and learning from, birds for 35 years and has been the Director of Bird Monitoring at Mass Audubon since 2006. During her career she has focused on research that has direct implications for bird conservation. This interest led to enlisting hundreds of citizen scientists for the creation of the highly regarded Massachusetts Breeding Bird Atlas 2 and two State of the Birds of Massachusetts reports.
She was a Farallon Island biologist where she studied Elephant Seals, Tufted Puffins, Brandt’s Cormorants, Western Gulls, and even did a little Great White Shark work. She went to graduate school in Georgia, where she studied Wood Storks, and was the former Director of Research at Cape May Bird Observatory in NJ. Her formative years as an ornithologist were spent on Great Gull Island, NY, home to the largest colonies of Common and Roseate Terns in the North Atlantic.
Joan has traveled extensively in the US (only missing OK, HI and KY) and Canada, Belize, Mexico, Ireland, Great Britain, France, Spain and Italy. While being particularly keen about seabird and wading bird ecology and behavior, Joan has never met a bird she didn’t love. She travels with an eye for culture as well as nature, and can think of no better way to spend a day than to be in a new place, with new friends, simply watching birds. (http://www.massaudubon.org/get-outdoors/travel-tours/trip-leaders/joan-walsh)
