True Films 3.0 - Kevin Kelly

C’mon, Geese
A maverick sculptor imprints baby goslings to follow his homemade
ultra-light airplane as if it were their mother, and in so doing he gets the
flock of geese to fly alongside him, where he can film them. Hollywood
turned this true story into the family movie Fly Away, and the great documentary
Winged Migration (p.191) borrowed the same technique for other
wild birds. But this is the original low-rent documentary made by the
Canadian artist himself, wherein he films his journey of invention, with
its many dead-ends, failures and ingenious solutions. You get the raw
energy and details of an artist at work. It’s an engaging tale, a brilliant
achievement, and a marvelous act of imagination.
By Bill Lishman
1989, 28 min.
Available from
bullfrogfilms.com
When he first started the project, ultra-light
aircraft were rare. He started out with simple
airfoils and invented sturdier craft as he went
along. No one had ever tried to convince birds
that a plane could be one of them. Success
seemed unlikely. It took a while to learn
how the geese thought. The whole family
was involved. Once airborne alongside the
airplane, the geese revealed all kinds of things
(captured on this film) about how they flew
that were new to science. There’s a curious
engineer approach to this film that supplements
the obvious love of the birds.
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