English version
Film Description (eng)
Dead Birds Flying High
In a northern German attic: boxes of pinned butterflies, carefully hand-coloured photographs of the local flora and fauna, hundreds of stuffed and dusty birds – Jürgen Friedrich Mahrt (1882–1940) did a great job. His collections echo a present that doesn’t exist anymore. And yet all signs of an ecological crisis can be found buried in them.
Dead or alive? There is an uncanny element in Jürgen Friedrich Mahrt’s photos: One can’t always be sure whether the animal captured in the frame is the result of hours of waiting or just a specimen staged to look lifelike. The ripples around the duck on the pond are missing, the bird of prey looks suspiciously calm directly into the lens. Mahrt crossed borders. He sacrificed his duties as a farmer to the urge to document natural environments we hardly find in nature today. Ancient forests, enchanted moors, macro views of fat, colourful caterpillars – almost magical images that make one sad in view of a variety irretrievably lost. His great-granddaughter Sönje Storm has the quiet eccentric’s estate analysed by experts, shows peat cutters, extinct species and a changing countryside. An exceedingly stimulating excursion, congenially accompanied by the scurrilous electronica sounds of Dominik Eulberg and Bertram Denzel. (Carolin Weidner, DOK Leipzig 2022)
Deutsch
350 ausgestopfte Vögel. 3000 Schmetterlinge, Pilze, Käfer. Die Sammlung ist dokumentarisch, obsessiv und poetisch. Die Vielzahl an Objekten, Schmetterlingskästen, Fotografien über Stunden, wahrscheinlich sogar Monate, mit der Hand koloriert. Wer nimmt sich so viel Zeit, was war in diesem Kopf los?
Regisseurin Sönje Storm öffnet in ihrem Film den Nachlass des Bauern Jürgen Friedrich Mahrt (1882-1940), der ihr Urgroßvater war. Im Ersten Weltkrieg wurde er für die Luftaufklärung zum Fotografen ausgebildet und an der Westfront eingesetzt. Ab 1919 beobachtet und dokumentiert er die Veränderungen in seiner Heimat: die menschlichen Eingriffe in die Naturlandschaften, den Rückgang der Arten. Er sammelt die Tiere seiner Zeit und eröffnet 1928 in seinem Bauernhaus ein privates Naturkundemuseum.
Mahrt beobachtet die fortschreitende Zerstörung fragiler Ökosysteme wie der Moore, dabei dokumentiert er Ursachen unserer Klimaprobleme : Bilder aus der Frühzeit des Anthropozäns.
BioFilmography Sönje Storm
Sönje Storm is the producer and director of the award-winning feature documentary Dead Birds Flying High, 85 min (DOKLeipzig 2022, Nordic Filmdays 2022, Achtung Berlin New Film Award 2023, Krakow Film Festival 2023). Dead Birds Flying High won the Golden Dove in the German Competition at DOKLeipzig 2022 and the Award of the Ecumenic Jury at the Achtung Berlin Film Festival 2023 and was nominated Best Feature Documentary at the German Film Critics Award 2023.