Judy Irving follows the story of Gigi and other California brown pelicans in personal documentary
PELICAN DREAMS (Judy Irving, 2014)
Lincoln Plaza Cinema, 1886 Broadway at 63rd St., 212-757-2280
Angelika Film Center, 18 West Houston St. at Mercer St., 212-995-2570
Opens Friday, November 7
www.pelicanmedia.org
Documentarian and bird lover Judy Irving has followed up her 2003 hit, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, with another sweet-natured nature film, Pelican Dreams. “These birds, I’ve loved all my life. They look like . . . flying dinosaurs,” Irving, who wrote, directed, photographed, edited, and narrates the film, says early on. “I love how graceful they are, and then, how clumsy. Their lives have always been a mystery to me, though. When that pelican landed on the Golden Gate Bridge, it felt like an invitation to follow it.” Irving was inspired to make the film immediately after hearing about a California brown pelican that was captured on the San Francisco landmark in August 2008. Irving uses that pelican, named Gigi after the Golden Gate, to explore the life of pelicans in general, traveling to the San Francisco Bay Oiled Wildlife Care and Education Center, where wildlife rehabilitator Monte Merrick cares for Gigi and other injured pelicans, and Santa Barbara Island in Channel Island National Park, where seabird ecologist Laurie Harvey works with the birds in a more natural, safe environment. She also visits wildlife rehabilitator Dani Nicholson and her husband, Bill, who live with injured pelicans, including Chorro, Toro, and Morro, and nurse them back to health, as well as Melanie Piazza of WildCare and Marie Travers of International Bird Rescue, who attempt to remove a fisherman’s hook from the beak of a pelican.
Along the way, Irving learns fascinating details about pelicans, from the way their eyes and heads change colors while breeding to the survival rate of chicks, from their fierce sibling rivalry to how they learn to fly and dive-bomb to snare sardines from the ocean, and how such disasters as the BP oil spill affect them. Irving, a Sundance- and Emmy-winning filmmaker, openly and honestly shares her obsession with the unique birds, which she’s adored since childhood. “I started to think that I looked like one. I was tall and gawky too, and I have a long face,” she says, then cuts to a shot of her as an adult posing next to Gigi. Featuring a soft, folk-bluesy score by American Music Club’s Bruce Kaphan, Pelican Dreams is a lovely look at the endearing creatures about which Dixon Lanier Merritt famously said, “A wonderful bird is the pelican / His bill will hold more than his belly can / He can take in his beak / Enough food for a week / But I’m damned if I see how the hell he can!”