Only two days until the free 
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.
The event is on Thursday, from 7 to 9 p.m. in the Meadowlands Environment Center in DeKorte Park, Lyndhurst, New Jersey.
The Meadowlands Commission, Bergen County Audubon Society, Ramapo College and the New Jersey chapter of The Nature Conservancy are proud to sponsor this special screening, along with a question-and-answer session afterward.
More information follows.
The Q-and-A will be 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.
To reserve seats, click here.
Check the left-hand column of this blog for directions to DeKorte.
"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.