The Starling
A woman adjusting to life after a loss contends with a feisty bird that's taken over her garden — and a husband who's struggling to find a way forward.
Murmur
A contemporary fairytale about the relationship between a mother and her autistic daughter, and their fascination with starling murmurations. Evie doesn’t seem to talk very much, though we learn she communicates with everything - the plants, grass, water, TV static and the starlings that gather over the sea. As murmurations form, so awakens a sense of understanding, connection and acceptance between mother and daughter. Murmur is a story of beauty and awe, utilising the stunning spectacle of the murmuration, a sign of greatness, as a metaphor for Autism Advocacy.
Starlings
It is night. The moon is shining. A static camera captures a huge flock of starlings searching the sky in circular movements… At first the starlings are hard to identify. Having deliberately edited frames coming from different generations of the original print in a certain metrical order, without changing the actual chronology of their movement, Kels has the constantly changing shapes of the birds dissolve in the rough grain of the celluloid. Once again a technical weakness of the celluloid forms the starting point of his visual enterprise. Shot on one reel without any interruption, the birds’ flight gradually forms configurations of astonishing beauty. —Millennium Film Journal, No. 30-31.
The Commoners
In 1890, one man had the idea to collect every bird ever mentioned in Shakespeare and release them into Central Park. The only bird to survive in the New World was the European starling, which became one of the most common birds in North America. Its introduction is now widely considered a major environmental disaster.
Starlings
The starling is a common bird that lives in close proximity to humans. It nests in hollows in trees, under roof tiles or in bird boxes. In Mikael Kristersson's film we see starlings from a new angle, inside a nest, from when they first inspect the nest site in early spring until the last chick flies away in June.