FILM & GESPRÄCH: Dokumentarfilm WATCHING PEOPLE WATCHING BIRDS mit Filmgespräch

Special screening of the documentary *Watching People Watching Birds* by Ulrike Franke & Michael Loeken.

With Lars Klein (Director of the Dangast National Park Visitor Center) in attendance, followed by a discussion about the film.

Bird populations and diversity are declining dramatically worldwide. At the same time, more and more people are discovering the world of birds for themselves: they all have their own unique stories that led them to become birdwatchers.

Looking through binoculars is also a search for something primal, unique, and true. In an almost magical way, this search seems to transfer to the viewer, as if one were stepping out of the theater with heightened senses into another world. Our film shifts its focus from the birds back to the people who inspire us with their love for birds and their devotion to nature. We also meet the world-famous author Jonathan Franzen, who says: “One reason wild birds are so important (…) is that they represent our last, best connection to a natural world that is otherwise in the process of disappearing.”

Politically charged, serious, yet also humorous, the film uses cinematic imagery and intense soundscapes to paint a picture of a society in the midst of a major crisis and upheaval. The film becomes a narrative of doubt and hope, life and death, of staying and disappearing. And the birds become, in an intoxicating, almost eerie way, a metaphor for the state of the world.