‘Lyrebird’ goes California Dreaming
The Message of the Lyrebird has been officially selected for the 2022 San Francisco IndieFest Green Film Festival which takes place from April 14th to April 24th.
The award-winning Australian nature documentary features Original Dancing by D’harawal Songman Matthew Doyle as Wiritjiribin (the First Lyrebird).
Dancing is the major behaviour of the lyrebird. When you watch a lyrebird dance you can see a mob of Australian Aboriginal people dancing. The sound of the clap-stick is also the sound of the lyrebird’s call. And so the lyrebird’s sounds and dancing is all based on Wiritjiribin.
Above: Production still – D’harawal Songman Matthew Doyle as Wiritjiribin (the First Lyrebird) in The Message of the Lyrebird. Credit, Simon Ozolins
The Green Film Festival of San Francisco is presented by SF IndieFest, a non-profit organisation, that has held over 60 film festivals over the past 24 years.
“Most of us don’t want to up and move to Mars just yet, so we’re looking for films that inspire us all to help save our asses.”
The festival will screen compelling documentaries, adventure films, animation and narrative fiction films with environmental themes. Films are curated into themed sections, which pair projects with complimentary subject matter or ideas to create a cinematic journey for audiences to engage with sustainable solutions.
Above: Screenshot of the SF Indefest portal. https://sfindie.com
2022 will see a hybrid event, from virtual on demand screenings via sfindie.com to in-person screenings at the historic Roxie Theater in the Mission District, where numerous Latino artistic and cultural institutions are based.
Victor (Dream Holder) Rodriguez working behind the scenes of The Message of the Lyrebird to visualise audio frequencies of the lyrebird.
Viewers can expect to see a dozen master-piece animation sequences by Venezuelan born, Victor Dream Holder, including a stop frame digital sequence of 4 dance ritual songs, synched together using the study of Cymatics.
Cymatics is the study of sound and vibration made visible, typically on the surface of a plate, diaphragm or membrane. From ancient Greek: κῦμα, meaning "wave". Since sound is a type of wave, it can be displayed through visual media. Cymatics is a subset of modal vibrational phenomena.
The SF IndieFest will again present cinematic storytelling via short and feature length documentary and narrative films as well as animation.
