Night Parrot Stories a film by Rob Nugent (89 minutes)
National Film and Sound Archive, ARC cinema, Canberra
4.00 pm. Saturday 19th March 2016
Somewhere in the remote deserts of Australia lived an elusive nocturnal bird called the Night Parrot. Virtually nothing is known of its ecology. It disappeared at the end of the 19th Century. Searching for evidence of its existence became a preoccupation. Night Parrot Stories was filmed in all the locations where Night Parrots where once lived, during a time when stories of extinction were everywhere. A conjugation of art and science, the film questions how knowledge and meaning are created and lost.
“The film documents a quest to locate the rare nocturnal desert dwelling bird, and presents a range of ethnographic approaches, while raising questions with respect to our fragmented and incomplete natural history archive, engagement with indigenous communities, and the ethics and aesthetics of representing more-than-human environments.”
– Tom Bristow, University of Melbourne.
Feature image: Rob Nugent
