Winged Migration and the Making of Winged Migration

After screening the documentary Winged Migration, tonight UT Arlington graduate student Matthew Lerberg discussed the film and how it was made including the ecological implications raised by it. It was fascinating to learn about how unnatural this award-winning “nature” documentary is while blatantly claiming to be the opposite. The film seems to situate itself in such a way that it is more about humanity than about the migration of the birds suggested by its title. Matthew discussed the manner by which the film actually proliferates the dialectics of human and animal through its imagery and specifically the methods by which the film was made. Though the title would suggest that the film is about the migration of birds, the crew actually imprinted the birds (meaning they raised them from birth so as to not be afraid of humans and taught them to follow machines like ultralights and hovercrafts), caged them, and took them to certain places along what would have been their natural migration route. Unfortunately because of this imprinting, the birds can never migrate naturally and ended up having to live on a farm.

This discussion has really led me to question the “naturalness” of nature documentaries. Though with imposing humans and human technologies the idea of nature is already questionable, the contrived basis for this film is actually disturbing. In one scene, for example, the filmmakers plant a broken down truck along a deserted highway in Monument Valley and deflate its tire to make it look like a flat. Then, as the cameras role, they release their imprinted geese and lead them onto the road after a semi drives past. Of course, the crew members leading the geese are never shown and the horns and noises used to call the birds are never heard thanks to the editing. Basically, to get the footage they wanted, the filmmakers staged nearly every scene in the film yet still call it a documentary. In the process, they broke the very ecological rules of respect the film obviously attempts to promote and reified detrimental ideas of man versus animal and nature versus culture.