In spring, the birds fly home, which means that the short nature documentary Modern Goose, directed by Karsten Wall, will now be playing online at NFB.ca! Originally premiering at TIFF in 2023, viewers can now fly over and re-watch it or catch for the first time. Wall does an incredible job of capturing the day to day lifestyle of a goose in nature, juxtaposing it with the harsh realities of urban living.
While many people see geese as bothersome, leaving trails of poop and picking fights, Wall’s film sheds light on the birds’ perspective of living in a concrete city. They do their best to survive in the man-made environment, from walking across roadways, swimming in polluted waters, nesting their eggs in trashed grasses, and eating bread provided by humans. Not only do they need to navigate the bustling city, but Wall’s film also emphasizes the need for them to embark on their migration journey.
This non-narrative film is filled with geese chatter and soundscapes of busy city streets. The visuals of extreme closeups of geese and establishing shots of the packed city give the viewer a perspective they haven’t seen before. It is as if you are looking into the city for the first time with fresh eyes.
“That’s part of the story: how we build these desolate areas. We bulldoze wetlands and then we replace them with fountains and parks. As a species, we destroy something that works perfectly fine and then try to recreate it. It makes us feel better. I wanted to show that and how the geese benefit from that, but also it screws up their lives in different ways,” says Wall, in a previous interview with POV. “What I took away from the film was that our cities and our structures are just barriers for nature, and that nature either goes around them or goes through them.”
Watch Modern Goose below from the NFB.
Modern Goose, Karsten Wall, provided by the National Film Board of Canada
