We saw this film a couple of weeks ago thanks to the San Jose Camera Cinema Club. The filmmaker, Judy Irving ("The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill") was in attendance. After the film screened, Irving said she'd long wanted to make a documentary about California Brown Pelicans because they'd fascinated her as a child and continued to do so into adulthood. What she did not have was a hook. She was diverted by the wild parrots that live around San Francisco's Telegraph Hill and made a very successful film about them. So now she was an avian documentary filmmaker.
Then an exhausted, dehydrated pelican to be named Gigi landed on San Francisco's Golden Gate (GG, get it?) bridge and the hook was set. "Pelican Dreams" revolves around Gigi's rehabilitation in the hands of some very caring people. It has many interludes to tell the rich story of the California Brown Pelican. For example, they almost went extinct because their nesting area on Santa Barbara Island off the California coast was poisoned by DDT runoff from a Los Angeles industrial firm. The DDT weakened the eggshells and of 1000 eggs one year, 999 were crushed under the weight of the parent. One entire year's crop of fledglings vanished.
Things have gotten much better for the pelicans since then. Brown pelicans from Baja California in Mexico have migrated north and repopulated the flocks in the Western US. However, wherever bird and man meet, it's often bad for bird. "Pelican Dreams" takes you through a lot of this in detail.
The movie is fascinating. If it has one fault, it's long for the subject matter, which reflects the filmmaker's fascination with the subject. However, the cinematography includes shots of pelicans' first flights and high-speed film clips of pelicans diving into the ocean to catch fish in their pouches. You likely won't see such wonders in another movie.
