Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #32666 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-06-26
• Rating: Universal, suitable for all
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Full Screen, PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 80 minutes

Synopsis
A documentary profiling Mark Bittner, a homeless musician, and his extraordinary relationship with the dozens of parrots that have made their home on Telegraph Hill in San Francisco.

Customer Reviews

''He's like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,''
In this moving expose of man and his relationship with animals, filmmaker Judy Irving follows ex counter culture rock and roller Mark Bittner as he cares for a flock of wild, cherry-crowned parrots. Mark arrived in San Francisco sometime at the end of the hippie era with the illusion of becoming a rock musician.

That was in the 1970s and he has been homeless and jobless since. Relying on the kindness of others - the owner of the local café gives him free coffee and food - Mark has eked out a life for himself in a shack on Nob Hill and has found his calling through the parrots he so lovingly adores. He knows each bird by name and tends to those either ill or injured.

Irving depicts a fascinating community of birds, including the feathered lovers Picasso and Sophie, the ailing Tupelo, and Mingus, a cantankerous conure who nests under the birdman's bed. There's also the flock's blue-crowned conure, Connor, a loner and outcast who symbolically mirrors Bittner. And the close-ups of the blinking parrots, with their bright green backs, red or blue heads and high-handed beaks, are indeed gorgeous.

Picasso and Sophie have been partners for many years, breaking up occasionally when one gets mad at the other. Mingus has a nest in Bittner's small cottage. It's a mystery how these parrots got to San Francisco from their native South America - and there are various urban legends, which try to explain this - but Bittner knows four were the starters of the flock. By now all the birds have well and truly adapted to the colder climate of northern California.

It is to the credit of Irving that she depicts Bittner as a sensitive thinking man and he draws some startling and very spiritual conclusions about our relationships with animals. The documentary also has a story to tell, and as such it builds up its drama. The owners of the cottage want to remodel, and Bittner must go. Connor is getting on in years and wobbly on his legs.

In another director's hands, this documentary might have been a bit hackneyed and precious, but Irving's insightful and glorious up-close photography and her astute observations of this truly beautiful city reveals larger individual truths for her subject, whilst also exploring this fascinating society of unwanted parrots who seemed to have survived, and even thrived, against the odds. Mike Leonard August 06.

Fly High
San Francisco is a one of a kind city. I fell in love with the spirit of the city long before I ever visited and once there fell in love with it all over again.

There are so many things about the city that people can associate with and although it is quite a bit of a tourist mecca there is much more to the life of the city than meets the eye.

It was in this spirit that I approached thiis film, having been referred to it on my last visit where I took an alternative route up and down from Coit Tower involving many, many steps.

The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill has a certain charm and naievete much like the city where it was shot. Perhaps San Francisco is the only city in the world where wild birds could bring about a career from nothing from a self-confessed Dharma Bum.

Beautifully shot with considerable care and obvious affection for each and every one of the subjects including the humans, this beautiful little movie is full of life and hope. If there was ever a spirit of the sixties it lives on in the tolerance the locals have for the birds and their admirers and perhaps there is a lesson for all environmentalists here in the faceof global warming.

It is a beautiful and at once a sad tale and throughout we come to recognise the individual birds almost as people with whom we share some growing up time.

If anything it is a film which celebrates the uniqueness of San Francisco and it's many inhabitants which makes it quite unlike any other city on this earth.