Animal Behavior Society Film Festival
In conjunction with the IEC, ABS is pleased to invite all conference participants to attend its 27th Annual Film Festival. Our festival honors outstanding amateur and professional films that portray important concepts in animal behavior research and education.
NON-COMMERCIAL CATEGORY:
Films made primarily for educational/research purposes, and not with the major goal of producing income. These are films made by individuals largely associated with animal behavior from a teaching, research, and/or applied perspective.
Film Title: Alpha Male (15 mins)
Director: Nathan Dappen
Synopsis: The life story of a male Java Macaque (Macaca fasicularis) named Tiki. Java's live in societies with a strict dominance hierarch, at the top of which sits the Alpha Male. All males fight for this position, but only one can succeed.
Film Title: Who's Your Neighbor? Evolution In Action (9 mins)
Director: Neil Losin
Synopsis: What happens when two species that have never encountered one another before suddenly find themselves living together? How do they respond to each other, and can their interactions affect their evolution and ecology? Filmed in Florida where invasive Anolis lizards are vying for space in an unfamiliar land.
Film Title: Thoughtful birds in action: mental feats the avian way (34 mins)
Director: Deirdre Cobbin
Synopsis: This film explores the remarkable cognitive ability of birds, drawing on work from an international list of key researchers. Novel experimental and field approaches show birds are capable of counting, have intuitive understanding of the physical properties of objects, have lateralized brains and solve novel problems by insight.
Film Title: Hen's Quest (6 mins)
Director: Myra Burrell
Synopsis: How does a peahen find a mate? Find out in the hilarious short film 'Hen's Quest', as we follow her along a path through the peacocks who want to win her affections. A tail-shaking good time!
Film Title: Battle of the Sexes: Evolution in Action (15 mins)
Director: Nathan Dappen
Synopsis: An exploration of the role that male-female relations play in evolution.
Film Title: Bird Island (39 mins)
Director: Sara Poisson
Synopsis: Generations of seabirds have found their way to Isla Rasa in the heart of Mexico's Gulf of California. For three months every spring this flat and barren rock comes to life as over a half a million birds gather on one tiny island to multiply. Hundreds of thousands of chicks greet the world head on, learn how to live, struggle to survive and eventually take to the sky—a bird's eye view of the circle of life.
COMMERCIAL CATEGORY:
Made by professional filmmakers with the express purpose of airing on broadcast television. Scientists may or may not be used as consulting experts, but typically the scientist is not the individual initiating production of the film.
Film Title: 1000 (17 mins)
Director: Dan Wedeking
Synopsis: This film explores what happens to one thousand animals after a network TV show does a piece on an extreme animal-hoarding situation. Letting his pet rats run freely in his home, a man’s house had become unlivable. A unique rescue followed in which 1000+ rats were rounded up, evaluated, and put up for adoption.
Film Title: Wild Scandanavia (52 mins)
Director: Oliver Goetzl
Synopsis: This film guides the viewer through the changing seasons in sparsely populated northeastern Scandinavia. Unique behavioral patterns are revealed that include hunting wolves, capercaillie flight, forest reindeer fights, wolverine play, saimaa seal maternal behavior, woodpecker nesting, and flying squirrel locomotion, all set in stunning landscapes.
