In this intimate documentary, the film-maker makes a pilgrimage to the central United States where the annual spring migration of the sandhill cranes occurs along the Platte river. As she makes this journey the author compares the migration to her own transformation as she turns forty. The film interweaves facts about this most elegant of birds with existential questions that tend to resonate around the midpoint of our lives. The sandhill crane is a bird species known to mate for life; it is one of the oldest living birds and, as such, might have some things to teach us about our ability, or inability, to find a lifelong mate. The film features spectacular footage of these ancient birds and various landscapes of the route from Montana, the author’s home, to the Platte river in central Nebraska. It is a meditation on nature and art, and poses essential questions about our need for both connection and solitude.
Cindy Stillwell is a film artist whose films have screened at venues worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Sundance Film Festival, and the International Film Festival of Rotterdam. In addition her short films are distributed in collections from Slamdance Film Festival, Full Frame Film Festival, the Journal of Short Film, and Future Shorts, in the U.K. She has been awarded residencies at MacDowell, the Ucross Foundation and the Helene Wurlitzer Foundation. Stillwell received her MFA from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. She currently lives in Bozeman, Montana, where she is an Associate Professor in film production in the School of Film and Photography at Montana State University.