Palila bird documentary brings Hawaii extinction fight to theaters
Laurie Sumiye’s A Paradise Lost follows the tiny Palila and its landmark court battle over habitat protections in Hawaii.
By Bianca Rossi · Entertainment Editor
3 min read
A six-inch Hawaiian bird with a yellow crown is getting the big-screen treatment after becoming the center of a landmark extinction fight.
A Paradise Lost, directed by Hawaii native Laurie Sumiye, uses animation and live-action footage to tell the story of the Palila, a finch found only on Mauna Kea in the Hawaiian Islands. According to a release for the film, the bird was at the center of Palila v. Hawaii, a 1979 lawsuit against the state of Hawaii aimed at preventing the species from vanishing.
Blooming Ink Pictures will launch a limited theatrical run for the documentary this summer. DCTV’s Firehouse Cinema in Manhattan will screen the film from July 31 through August 6. In Los Angeles, it will play from August 2 through August 4 at the Now Instant Theater and Laemmle Royal.
After its East Coast debut at DCTV, the film is set to be presented nationally on PBS and on select global airlines, according to the announcement.
A court case with a bird at the table
The film’s release says the Palila is one of the rarest birds in the world. During the court fight, a stuffed Palila specimen sat at the table, and the documentary uses that specimen as the story’s narrator.
The release says the case established habitat protections for American endangered species. Today, the Palila’s condition remains critical, and the film follows a Native Hawaiian conservationist working to restore the bird’s native forest, which the release says has been affected by climate change, cattle ranching and sheep grazing.
In the film, the Palila narrator asks, “How did I, a little bird, become the first animal to go to court to save their kind?” The narrator adds, “In my dream, we survived. Mauna Kea was protected.”
The trailer frames Hawaii as a front line for species loss. One expert in the trailer says, “Hawaii is in an extinction crisis,” adding, “If you work in Hawaii, you’re working on the frontlines of extinction every day.”
Festival run and painted birds
A Paradise Lost has already won the Best Social Justice and Environment Documentary Award at the Festival De Cine Antigua in Guatemala. It has also screened at the Hawaii International Film Festival, the DisOrient Asian American Film Festival in Oregon, the Santiago Wild Film Festival in Chile, the EcoFrames Environmental Film Festival in Greece and the SCINEMA International Science Festival in Australia.
Sumiye is an artist, animator and filmmaker whose earlier credits include the short films Struggle for Existence and Of Memory and Los Sures.
Making A Paradise Lost also led Sumiye into another Palila project: a series of paintings of the endangered bird. On her website, she says a conservationist she interviewed estimated that there are about 600 Palila birds left in the world.
“I believed I could magically manifest more birds into existence by painting them,” Sumiye writes. She says the paintings are based on photographs by scientists, wildlife photographers and conservationists involved in protecting the species.
“Creating one image per individual means doubling the number of Palila,” Sumiye writes. “We see them as individuals who are on the same level of importance as humans.”
This story draws on original reporting from Deadline.