Pretty Bird (2006)

Summary:

Shot on Super 16mm, Pretty Bird is a portrait of life after seventy as experienced by a Polish immigrant who lives in an assisted-living apartment. Through the old man’s interactions with his pet bird and his more-American-than-Polish son, the film reflects upon a man’s struggle to maintain dignity as he ages, his nostalgia for his homeland, and the universal need for companionship.

The Backstory:

In 2001, I was an exchange student in Warsaw, Poland. My host parents (host grandparents, really) were Wlodzimierz and Irena Jeske. In just a few months, I came to know them as Wlodek (an endearing short form of Wlodzimierz) and Babcia Zabcia (“grandmother frog”).

Wlodek had lived a hard life. Though I only came to know in his mid-eighties, Irena told me the story of his long life—how he lived through World War II, the Warsaw Uprising, communism and six years in its prisons, and finally the disappointments of corrupt, Polish democracy. They told me, too, of when their only child moved with her grandchildren to America. During our Sunday afternoon dinners, Babcia and Wlodek taught me many things about their language and country, but more than anything, they made the greyest city in the world feel like home.

I was thinking of Wlodek one afternoon while driving in Center City Philadelphia. I saw an old man sitting outside a courtyard near an apartment building. He was swarmed by pigeons, flapping and fighting their way into his hands and onto his arms to take seeds he was feeding them. I was reminded of a scene from one of Bruno Schulz’s short stories and immediately got out my notebook. Inspired by the haunting beauty of this sight and with Wlodek as a character reference, I wrote the first draft of Pretty Bird.

Two weeks later, Wlodek died.

I began shooting Pretty Bird, my first narrative, just a few months later and have dedicated the film to his memory.

Screenings:

Diamond Screen Film Festival—The Reel Theatre—Philadelphia, PA
Bryn Mawr Film Institute—Bryn Mawr, PA
VIII Pokaz Kina Niezależnego “Zbliżenia” -–Mleczarnia—Wroclaw, Poland
James River Film Festival—Richmond, VA *Juried Film Finalist*