Reserve Your Seat Now For a Special Major Screening!

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Here's your first chance to attend a free September screening of the acclaimed new documentary film, "The Lost Bird Project,"about the stories of five birds driven to extinction in modern times and sculptor Todd McGrain’s project to memorialize them.

LB-poster-001The event is on Thursday, Sept. 13,  from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Meadowlands Environment Center in DeKorte Park, Lyndhurst, New Jersey.

The Meadowlands Commission, Bergen County Audubon Society and Ramapo College are proud to sponsor this special screening, along with a question-and-answer session afterward with artist Todd McGrain,  director Deborah Dickson, producer Muffie Meyer and executive producer Andy Stern, Jim Wright from the Meadowlands Commission and  Don Torino from Bergen County Audubon Society.

The Hiram Blauvelt Art Museum will have specimens of the extinct Passenger Pigeon on display at the center, and you will also be able to view two Heath Hen specimens after the screening.

We will post more information as the event grows closer, but we wanted to give everyone a heads up so they can save the date.

To reserve seats, click here.

Details about the film follow.

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"The Lost Bird Project"  follows the road-trip that McGrain and his brother-in-law, Andy, take as they search for the locations where the birds were last seen in the wild and negotiate for permission to install McGrain’s large bronze sculptures there.

Traveling from Florida to Martha’s Vineyard to Newfoundland over a period of two years, Todd and Andy scout locations, talk to park rangers, speak at town meetings and battle bureaucracy in their effort to gather support for the project.

McGrain’s aim in placing the sculptures is to give presence to the birds where they are now so starkly absent. “These birds are not commonly known,” he says, “and they ought to be, because forgetting is another kind of extinction. It’s such a thorough erasing.”

The film is an elegy to the five birds and a thoughtful, sometimes humorous look at the artist and his mission. The Lost Bird Project is a “buddy movie” about public art, extinction and memory.

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