The Portuguese-Swiss film by Maya Kosa and Sérgio da Costa arrives at the Azores Birdwatching Arts Festival in Lajes do Pico on September 25. Moving delicately between documentary and fiction, “Bird Island” tells a story about injured birds, human fragility and the quiet possibility that caring for another living creature can also become a way of healing ourselves.
There are moments when the distance between a wounded bird and a wounded human being becomes unexpectedly small. Both may retreat from the world. Both can become frightened by contact. Both may require patience before trusting again. And sometimes, in caring for the fragility of another creature, a person begins almost imperceptibly to rediscover his own strength. It is within this intimate territory that “Bird Island,” by Portuguese-Swiss filmmakers Maya Kosa and Sérgio da Costa, unfolds—a film that now travels to the island of Pico as part of the ninth Azores Birdwatching Arts Festival.
The story follows Antonin, whose serious health problems have left him struggling with social interaction. Hoping to help him gradually return to the world of people, social services place him at a bird rehabilitation center in Geneva. There he meets Paul, who teaches him how to care for the animals while approaching his own departure into retirement. Around them are birds that cannot simply be released into the sky: they must first be observed, handled carefully, fed, treated and allowed the time necessary to recover. Antonin recognizes something of himself in them. As the birds heal, so, slowly, does he. His recovering self-esteem becomes intertwined with the vulnerable creatures entrusted to his care.
The origins of the film are themselves rooted in an encounter with an injured bird. Sérgio da Costa recalls finding one in the garden of a small house where he was living. The discovery led him to a rehabilitation center and then toward an expanding curiosity about birds themselves. He began researching species and behavior and, in doing so, started looking differently at the birds that had always been around him. “I began to see them in a new way,” he recalls. Their astonishing diversity—their behaviors, differences and ways of existing—opened what he describes as an almost limitless field of discovery. The ordinary garden had not changed. His way of seeing it had.
That transformation of attention makes the film particularly suited to the philosophy of the Azores Birdwatching Arts Festival. Organized annually by MiratecArts in partnership with the Municipality of Lajes do Pico, the festival uses art and education to encourage communities to notice the natural world surrounding them. Field excursions, school activities, artistic programming and cinema become different paths toward the same destination: learning to observe. “This film could not fit our festival better,” says MiratecArts artistic director Terry Costa, describing it as a work “between documentary and fiction” for those who love nature.
“Bird Island” has already traveled through important international film festivals, including Locarno, IndieLisboa and the Marseille International Film Festival. Its arrival in Pico, however, gives the film another kind of setting. On an Atlantic island where birds are part of the visible and invisible rhythms of migration, ocean and season, a story about learning to see them differently acquires a particular resonance. The screening takes place Friday, September 25, at 8:30 p.m. in the Municipal Auditorium of Lajes do Pico. Admission is free, with the film suggested for audiences over 12. The festival continues Sunday, September 27, with a matinée devoted to bird-themed documentaries. The complete program is available through MiratecArts.
There is a beautiful paradox at the heart of this film. Birds represent flight, yet the birds Antonin encounters cannot initially fly away. He, too, is caught somewhere between confinement and return. Their vulnerability becomes a mirror, but their recovery also becomes a possibility.
Perhaps this is why watching birds has fascinated human beings for so long. We look upward and imagine freedom. Yet “Bird Island” asks us to look more closely at what happens before flight—the wounded wing, the patient hand, the long interval of recovery.
Sometimes returning to life does not begin with learning how to fly.
It begins with caring for something else until, one morning, we discover that we too have found our wings.
—
TRAILER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Based on a Press Release from MiratecArts. The photos are from MiratecArts.