TRAILER
As I grew up I was fervently desirous of becoming acquainted with nature.
– John James Audubon
Audubon vividly captures the remarkable life of John James Audubon. The Birds of America was a monumental work by an artist and naturalist obsessed with his work. Hosting the film's world premiere at the 2015 Environmental Film Festival in the Nation's Capital allowed us to honor Audubon and his significance as an artist and conservationist.
– Flo Stone, Founder, Environmental Film Festival in the Nation’s Capital
One of the most absorbing art documentaries I’ve seen recently, Audubon is very impressively researched, written and photographed, and SO pleasurable to watch. Though Audubon himself encompasses many disciplines – ornithology, botany, natural history, etc., it’s really the artistic aspect of his Birds of America that captures our imagination—and ultimately that’s why this film is so stimulating.
– Margaret Parsons, Curator, Film Dept National Gallery of Art
I think [it's] one of the most superb documentaries I've ever seen at any time. This film really captures the life of this great man. Anyone that's interested in birds, that's interested in nature, that's interested in conservation, and interested in American History, should see this film.
– Victor Emanuel, Victor Emanuel Tours
ABOUT JOHN JAMES AUDUBON
He was one of the most remarkable men in early America. A self-taught painter and ornithologist, he pursued a dream that made him famous in his lifetime and left a legacy in art and science that endures to this day. His portrait hangs in the White House and his statue stands over the entrance to the American Museum of Natural History. Yet the story of John James Audubon has never been told on movie screens.
Born in Haiti in 1785, he and his family fled the revolution and moved to Nantes, France in the early 1790s, where he grew up until the age of 18. Seeking refuge from conscription in Napoleon’s army, he emigrated to the fledgling United States, to a farm purchased by his father outside of Philadelphia.
There he met the love of his life, Lucy Bakewell, the daughter of a well-to-do English merchant family. Seeking their fortune, the couple moved upon marriage to the then-frontier of Henderson, Kentucky, where they opened a series of general stores. All the while, Audubon had been fascinated by birds from his youth in France to his time on the American Frontier. When his businesses went bankrupt in the Panic of 1819, Audubon made a daring bet: to paint all of the bird species of America, in life size. It was a project that would take him decades.
In the end, Audubon would paint all 435 then-known species of birds in America (some of them multiple times) on a journey that stretched from the Florida Keys to the straits of Newfoundland to the swamps of Louisiana and Texas to the mountains of Montana and the Dakotas, much of it on foot.
INTERVIEW SUBJECT BIOS
Richard Rhodes
AuthorRichard Rhodes is an author, journalist and historian. He is the author of “John James Audubon: The Making of an American,” the Pulitzer Prize winning “The Making of the Atomic Bomb,” and twenty-one other books. He frequently lectures and gives talks on a wide range of subjects, including testifying before the US Senate on nuclear energy.
Jamie Wyeth
PainterJamie Wyeth is a contemporary American realist painter, the son of Andrew Wyeth and grandson of N.C. Wyeth. He is the artistic descendent of the Brandywine School, dedicated to portraying the rural landscape, people and animals of Delaware and Pennsylvania that bears its name.
Roberta J.M. Olson
Art Historian, AuthorRoberta Olson is Curator of Drawings at the New York Historical Society and author of “Audubon's Aviary: The Original Watercolors for The Birds of America” She has curated three exhibitions of Audubon’s watercolors entitled ‘Audubon’s Aviary’ at the New York Historical Society. She holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University and was a Professor of Art History at Wheaton College for twenty-five years.
John Fitzpatrick
Director, Cornell Lab of OrnithologyJohn Fitzpatrick has been the Director of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology since 1995. Prior to that he was Executive Director at the Archbold Biological Station (1988-95), a private research foundation in Central Florida, and Director of Birds at the Field Museum of Natural History (1978-89). He is the past president of the American Ornithologists Union (2000-02) and a former Director of The Nature Conservancy (1995-2005).
Danny Heitman
Author, JournalistDanny Heitman is an editor and columnist for the Baton Rouge and New Orleans Advocate and author of “A Summer of Birds: John James Audubon at Oakley House,” an account of Audubon’s time in Louisiana. His work has also appeared in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
Christoph Irmscher
Professor, University of Indiana at BloomingtonChristoph Irmscher is the Geroge F. Getz Professor in the Wells Scholars Program at the University of Indiana at Bloomington. His areas of expertise include early American nature writing and he has edited volumes of Audubon’s writings.
To be a good draftsman was to me a blessing.
– John James Audubon