![]() ![]() This way, the researchers found, the kites seem to cross over the Karakoram range. The researchers tagged 19 kites – 14 adults and five pre-adults – with GPS trackers to reveal their routes. In a recent study published on September 29, scientists from the Wildlife Institute of India (WII), Dehradun, the University of Oxford and the Doñana Biological Station, Seville, tracked the migration of black-eared kites to and from Delhi, flying over nine Asian countries. In fact, scientists continue to be intrigued by how and where these birds cross the Himalayan barrier. While some ornithologists have studied the migration of waterbirds that flap across the Himalaya to get to India, the raptors’ routes have been less known. One of them is the black-eared kite, a bird of prey, also called a raptor, that breeds in central-northern Asia, and spends its winter in multiple parts of South Asia, including in and around Delhi. Over 229 species of migratory birds spend their winters in the Indian subcontinent. ![]() These migrants journey along one of the world’s nine major flyways – the patterned routes in the sky that birds take – to reach their destinations. Now is quite the season for bird-watchers in the tropics, as they welcome thousands of migratory birds flying towards their winter homes. Photo: nubobo/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0. The fate of birds connects with the fate of humans.A black kite, of which the black-eared kite is a subspecies, takes flight somewhere in Japan, January 2014. Rather, it’s a holistic meditation on the interdependence of living things – of all that breathe. Sen doesn’t see his film as a nature or wildlife film. But that’s what they’re interested in and we had to respect the integrity of their lives and their concerns.” The film is ultimately ecological and does not have a fractal political ambition.”īut he adds, “I feel it’s firmly political in the sense that the brothers are concerned about the relationship between humans and birds, which is its own kind of politics. “I was interested in how the real world leaks in, and that’s the way resonances or tremors of the world are sensed. And you can sense the political as a kind of oblique tangential presence in the film, the fact that the city is on the boil and there’s a lot of turbulence developing in the city of Delhi the last two years,” Sen notes. “The sectarian stuff is very obvious in what’s happening. While the director gestures toward that, he doesn’t make it an overt topic of All That Breathes. There is an obvious junction between the toxic skies and the toxic political atmosphere. The brothers, as Muslims, are potential targets of violence. Hanging over Delhi is not only smog but, as in the rest of India, rising political tensions as a result of strident Hindu nationalism. He says absurd things, like, ‘What happens if there is a nuclear war - will the birds survive?’ …You really fall in love with him.” “He gets the laughs and things happen to him - his glasses get taken away. “Salik brings a kind of unguarded innocence to the film, which is helpful because it contrasts with the seriousness of the brothers,” Sen says. Salik Rehman in ‘All That Breathes’ Sideshow/Submarine Deluxe/HBO Documentary Films The minute that you walked into that tiny, damp, air-lit basement, and you see the metal cutting machines on one side and these incredible regal birds on the other, it’s cinematically dense and riveting.” And that’s when I came upon the work of the brothers. So, I started researching what happens to birds when they fall down. And I remember seeing this vaguely while driving my car one day and I was truly gripped with this figure. ![]() “I was really gripped by this figure of the black dot in the sky, which is the black kite,” recalls filmmaker Shaunak Sen, “the lazy gliding dots that you see - one of the them starts falling down. In All That Breathes, brothers Nadeem and Saud operate a subterranean workshop-cum-makeshift animal hospital where they aid injured and ailing black kites, a bird of prey increasingly vulnerable to Delhi’s intense air pollution. One of the top contenders for Best Documentary at the Oscars this year ranges from the skies above Delhi, India to a basement below the city’s north end.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |