Birds at Sunrise

Directed by Joyce Wieland

Canada, 1986 (experimental, 10 minutes, colour)

Image: © Canadian Filmmakers Distribution Centre

Film Description:
"Birds at Sunrise, shot by Joyce Wieland in the early seventies but only recently finished, is a minimalist nature movie with a playful sensibility; it consists entirely of shots of birds taken through a camera attached to a cardboard tube."
-- Festival of Festivals (source)

Film Credits (partial):
Film Editing:	Susan Rynard, Joyce Wieland
Additional Credits:	'Psalm 23 read by Eve Rotstein'

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Notes about Birds at Sunrise

Shown at the Festival of Festivals (Toronto) in 1986.

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Quotes by the Director

"The film [Birds at Sunrise] was originally photographed in 1972. Birds from my window were filmed during the winter, through to the spring, with the early morning light. I became caught up in their frozen world and their ability to survive the bitter cold. I welcomed their chirps and their songs which offered life and hope for spring. In 1984 I was part of a cultural exchange between Canada and Israel. During my visit my unfinished movie came to mind. A connection was established in my mind—so that the suffering of the birds became, in a sense, symbolic of the Jews and their survival through suffering. [...]"
-- Joyce Wieland (source)

"Birds at Sunrise is a film I started when I came back to Toronto [after living in New York]. I would get up about 4 a.m. and shoot birds in the window, all over this little tree, and on the ground. I sometimes used rolled-up papers to make these strange irises, and I made other irises out of paper and cardboard. I think I put a scratch in some of the original. It was the life of birds at the window when dawn's coming and the light is changing. It is still [in 1981] just sitting there. It's not finished."
-- Joyce Wieland (source)

Quote about Birds at Sunrise

"Using the Hebraic reading of the 23rd psalm as a preface, [Joyce Wieland] achieves an iris effect with a rolled-up newspaper to isolate the images of birds shot in the early morning in her garden. Birds at Sunrise is again intensely direct and simple in its conception and consequently has a sad yet humanist warmth so rare in the avant-garde."
-- Michael O'Pray (source)