The QC Environmental Film Series eighth season begins in January, but you don’t have to wait that long to join.
They will welcome fans, old and new, at a free QCEFS “Sneak Peek” film event, with the award-winning documentary “Every Little Thing” flying into St. Ambrose’s Galvin Fine Arts Center on Sunday, Nov. 15 at 3 p.m.
Follow Hollywood hummingbird rehabilitator Terry Masear as she cares for injured hummingbirds in a magical, inspiring tale of love, fragility, healing, and the delicate beauty in tiny acts of greatness.
Masear (author of the 2015 book “Fastest Things on Wings”) rehabs even the most fragile of patients at her hummingbird rescue in the Hollywood Hills, but the path to survival is fraught with uncertainty.
Through Australian filmmaker Sally Aitken's moving documentary, we become invested in Terry's hummingbird patients -- including Cactus, Jimmy, Wasabi, Raisin, and Mikhail, according to a synopsis. Terry’s deep dedication to saving these dazzling little creatures also explores how caring for them helps her cope with past personal hardships and loss. The 2024 documentary was a Sundance Grand Jury Prize nominee, and a SXSW Audience Favorite.
Two-time Emmy nominated filmmaker Aitken will take part virtually Nov. 15 from her home in Australia as a reflection speaker following the 93-minute movie.
A January 2024 review of the film in The Hollywood Reporter called it “effortlessly riveting” and that it “acknowledges the ways hummingbirds have been endlessly poeticized, and it offers stunning visual poetry of its own as it zeroes in on rehabilitation, an undertaking both practical and spiritual. The way Aitken and her ace team have made a handful of these birds, each a few inches long and weighing a couple of grams, into compelling screen characters is, well, no small thing,” the review said.
“It was a delight to get a message from them because obviously we love the fact that the film resonates and is deemed worthy of engaging audiences like that,” Aitken said recently of QCEFS in a recent Zoom interview from her Sydney home. “That's why we made the film.”
“I love the diversity -- be that the human condition in the environmental sphere, be that the human condition in terms of pop culture, be that the human condition in political histories,” she said of her varied films (which include a 2023 doc on the Australian children’s music group The Wiggles).
“I like finding different subjects but always finding some sort of emotional story within that world and within that subject. And I think the more films I make, people tell me what they find in my films is that kind of humanity core, that there is something about the human condition that is written large through the work.”
Previously, Aitken directed Playing with Sharks (2021), a feature documentary that follows Valerie Taylor’s decades‑long relationship with sharks, her conservation campaigns, and her role in filming real great white shark sequences for the 1975 film Jaws.
Both Aitken’s shark film and hummingbird film train their lens on strong women in their fields – Valerie Taylor and Terry Masear, respectively.
“There’s a similarity between a woman and her experiences as a pioneering underwater educator, communicator, diver, shark wrangler, shark trainer, and a woman who cares for broken hummingbirds,” she said, noting the movies focus on both the animal species and their caretakers.
“What all of these films do is remind ourselves and humble ourselves to the planet and the web of life,” Aitken said.
“There's been such a narrative for so long about humankind's dominance, and this alone is the narrative that I think we are in peril if we don't keep addressing to protect our planet. And so in that sense, these are very environmental stories because that wider critical reminder that sentience, that behaviors, we see those through the prism of what it is to be human, but that is not superior to, nor is it exclusive to how to live on Earth.”
Compassion as king
In a harsh, divided world ravaged by war, hatred, arrogance and cruelty, the themes of “Every Little Thing” are empathy, compassion, interconnectedness and humility – traits we could all use more of.
“How much difficulty do hummingbirds get in that they need this level of kind of on-demand hospitalization?” Aitken asked. “But what I actually quickly realized is that that in itself is the portal into a story about compassion, and that that story is one that I believe, particularly in this moment, we're really craving to hear.
“We're craving the reminder that these acts of compassion live within all of us,” Aitken added. “It's not only somebody who is a wildlife rehabilitator, if you can get down on bended knee and pick up a creature that weighs the same as a Post-It note, that is a gigantic act of your own compassion. It says more about you than it does about the hummingbird.”
“This humility and this opportunity to remind ourselves of the good that exists in all of us and the opportunity that we all have for empathy and compassion,” she said. “And that within that, we start to again shift our mindset around extractive processes on the Earth and perhaps re-look at habitat and conservation.”
The filmmaker was fascinated by hummingbirds, which don’t exist in Australia, she said.
“They're like fairies. They're iridescent, they're fast, they're tiny, they're magical,” Aiken said. “And so is the world, you know. And so you use this kind of entry point of Terry and the world that she is creating in terms of rehabilitating hummingbirds. And we follow it over the season of the spring-summer cycle where, for whatever reason, hummingbirds can be very vulnerable and they do get into different situations that need repair.”
“We're accessing natural history storytelling around the uniqueness of how hummingbirds behave and unique things about their character and that in every bird there's personality in the same way that there are in humans and every species on Earth, that we are in a larger way accessing the magic and the miracle of the world, and that the world is full of surprises, and sometimes they're just in our backyards,” she said.
Terry is also an English scholar and a brilliant writer, Aitken said.
“She loves the poets. And so there was a whole sort of layer of philosophy that existed in just the way Terry is in the world,” she said. “So during the edit, I was absolutely convinced she was some kind of prophet, actually, and that really in the most simplistic of statements were these profound truths.”
Extraordinary work for no pay
The work she does is strictly volunteer, and her alone (with no co-workers), Aitken noted.
“And that phone goes all day, every day, and she is the only one at the end of it answering. And it's extraordinary,” she said.
Capturing such fast creatures on film was a challenge, Aitken said, noting she had lots of help.
“We had a team of cinematographers -- if I thought that a hummingbird rehabilitator was a specialized career, it is equally true that a wildlife cinematographer who specializes in shooting hummingbirds is a specialized career,” she said. “We worked with Ann Johnson-Prum, who's based on the East Coast, and Ann shoots many beautiful films about all kinds of animals, but she does happen to have this specialism in shooting birds and specifically hummingbirds.
“She's married to an ornithologist, so there's that,” Aitken said. “But all the wildlife footage of the birds and the birds that are not in rehab, that is largely Anne's footage. And she's also a specialist in the Phantom camera, which essentially allows you to shoot at a very high frame rate, meaning you can slow the image down.
“So from the beginning, in terms of a visual creative treatment, I knew that we wanted to access these ideas of otherworldliness and magic,” she said. “And then the other big part of it, of course, is capturing the birds that are going through the rehab and the birds that— we see those birds through Terry’s eyes.
See a trailer for the film HERE:
"So the personality was very critical, and the way in which Terry engages with those birds as they go through their rehab was very critical. So that required strong observational skills. And so we had two different cinematographers for that at different times.”
Aitken was constantly inspired by wonder and compassion in caring for the birds.
“I was also inspired by the idea of the hummingbird as this sort of tiny creature against this giant metropolis of Los Angeles and sort of seeing Los Angeles through that lens,” she said. “It’s a storied city. It's a mythological city. But it hadn't really been seen in this way, so I thought that was an opportunity as well, the sort of sprawling city against the sort of tiny bird.”
Terry also opened up about her sometimes difficult childhood, which is part of the film.
“It answered or suggested some connections that I hadn't been aware of about caring for creatures that are vulnerable was perhaps a reflection of her own experiences,” Aitken said. “And then being able to use those experiences in an empathetic way for the care of the birds, I thought that was really interesting. So we found a way of evoking the kind of biography elements through the use of archive and wove that together with the birds.”
As a female filmmaker, she was thrilled to highlight these women, who have been role models to her.
“I think while both those stories are about strong women and the environment, and specifically two different species, sharks and hummingbirds. I think in a wider way, sharks are misunderstood and hummingbirds are ordinary,” Aitken said.
“So I like stories in which we re-see the world, I suppose. That's the commonality. Not only, although I am very inspired by and always engaged in stories that allow us to see women in a kind of bigger way.”
“In a time of much bland simulacrum in our filmic markets it feels rare, precious, and good to create something unusual and magical,” the director wrote in the film production notes. “For me, it’s been an exploration into the heart of what makes us human and a reaffirmation of what I love about the craft of directing and storytelling.”
“Every Little Thing” follows the “remarkable story of a woman who, in dedicating herself to saving injured or troubled hummingbirds, unveils a parable that I hope resonates with the fragility and resilience inherent in all of us,” Aitken wrote.
Doors open at 2, and next project
On Sunday, Nov. 15, doors will open at the St. Ambrose Galvin Fine Arts Center at 2 p.m. for ENVIRO Connect in the lobby. ENVIRO Connect is an educational tabling fair with environmental and conservation partners to help attendees “connect” to the theme of the movie. “Every Little Thing” will begin at 3 p.m., followed by a Q&A with Aitken.
Her next project is her first narrative feature film (an animated movie), she’s working on now about the real-life penguin couple, Sphen and Magic – who became internationally famous and symbolic for the Australian gay rights movement.
“It’s inspired by real life, because real life is wonderful and surprising and diverse and amazing,” Aitken said. “Sphen and Magic are two penguins who met and fell in love at the Sydney Aquarium. Penguins mate for life. I feel I'm okay to say fell in love. And they're gay.
“And they were given two eggs over the time period, which they adopted and nurtured, and they became these sort of incredible family poster representation, if you will, of a rainbow family,” she said. “But tragically, a couple of years ago, Sphen died. And it was actually in reading the story of how Magic responded to Sphen's death, singing over Sphen’s body and the whole colony of penguins joining in, singing over Sphen's body. This is an animated family adventure where we take this family into an epic quest.”
“And it's a magical story,” Aitken said. “This has to be made. It just is so wonderful. And it's got a crazy cast of characters. But at its core, it's about those things in that family of penguins. And also about love. It's a story about love. Doesn't matter where you find it.”
The QC Environmental Film Series mission is to bring inspirational, educational, environmental films to the community, encouraging grassroots activism for environmental justice and the care of the planet. The 2027 QCEFS runs January 17 to February 28th.
To learn more about the QC Environmental Film Series, visit qcenvironmentalfilmseries.org.
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