Homing

The birds that European settlers brought to the Americas drove Purple Martins out of the wild so that now they can only nest in birdhouses built to prevent their extinction. The film follows their migration from the Amazon to the places they are dependent on.

In English, the meaning of this delightful word is easy enough to understand: homing season refers to that time of year when birds fly home from their migration and nest. For North American purple martins, this is easier said than done: driven out of their nests by the colonization of the continent centuries ago, they have since had to rely on the hospitality of humans. Homing charts the birds’ journey and the ways in which humans, pictured as anonymous giants, attempt to help them. Tamer Hassan, who let the filming be guided by the birds, wished to capture the intimate bond at play in the unbelievably careful touch of the ornithologists, who play a decisive role in the survival of the species. Most importantly, reflecting an impulse present across many nature-centred films, Hassan seeks out ways to learn to see anew, and thus an alternative gaze. The film hence goes back and forth between two contrasting scales, zooming out to capture the flight of a flock of birds and zooming in to film them at the giant and yet incredibly delicate hands of humans. This may well be the first time that birds are shown in such an arresting light, where feelings of uncanniness and extreme familiarity overlap. One particularly tender scene, focusing on a hatch of chicks, leans into this feeling: captured on a human scale, these tiny creatures turn out to have more in common with us than we might have thought. 

Jérôme Momcilovic