This film about the Ivory-billed Woodpecker will be shown at the Olympia
Film Society on October 12, 2010

GHOST BIRD
Dir: Scott Crocker / 2010 / US / 85 minutes
"Director Scott Crocker has turned a bird-watching tale, Ghost Bird, into
a multilayered story that will fascinate everybody. Ghost Bird, is a witty,
wistful documentary about the supposed rediscovery in Arkansas of the
ivory-billed woodpecker, a bird thought to have been extinct for decades. The
film focuses on Brinkley, Arkansas, a tiny town in the eastern part of the
state that went woodpecker crazy after one of the birds was or wasn't seen
there in 2004. An inconclusive bit of video helped start the mania, and the
scruffy town did its best to capitalize, with a woodpecker gift shop, a
woodpecker hamburger and so on; a barber shop even offered a woodpecker
haircut. Mr. Crocker, showing a terrific sense of pacing, lets the excitement that
enveloped the town sink in just long enough, then turns to the subsequent
debate over whether the video actually showed an ivory-bill. By the time
he's done, you may convinced that there was no miraculous resurrection, and
you also know why that is important: the continuing search for proof that
the bird is back has siphoned money from efforts to save species that are
definitely still with us and endangered. But there's nothing dry about the
debates between experts as presented by Mr. Crocker: he throws in goofy cameos
by Woody Woodpecker and Donald H. Rumsfeld. But in the films lighter
segments he's never laughing at the people of Brinkley. He's more interested in
letting their unpretentious good humor shine through. One area resident,
shown while getting a haircut (though not the woodpecker one), mentions
Bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster". National Public Radio
_http://ghostbirdmovie.com/_ (http://ghostbirdmovie.com/)
_http://www.olympiafilmsociety.org/_ (http://www.olympiafilmsociety.org/)