Birds of America

Breath-taking nature, huge swarms of birds of all kinds: when naturalist and artist John James Audubon arrived in the United States in the early nineteenth century, he stepped into a real paradise. But a fragile one, as the Frenchman quickly realised. In Birds of America, filmmaker Jacques Loeuille composes a love letter to the founding father of nature conservation. Audubon not only made a name for himself, but also immortalised a vast, hugely varied range of birds in his sophisticated paintings, bursting with colour, energy and drama. Ground-breaking work, recording this diversity of bird life before it was banished from the earth forever. Following a route along the Mississippi, Birds of America shows how much was lost in a relatively short time through industrialisation, greed and indifference. Animals were made extinct, Native Americans persecuted, landscapes despoiled. A saddening view of what humanity can do. As well as a passionate ode to what nature has to offer. (International Film Festival Rotterdam)