How birds got their songs

Published Feb. 3, 2010 at 10:27 p.m.
Film
...Wakinyan RedShirt has made three films in his life: Lego Star Wars , Bionicle Heroes , and The Wolf Show...But perhaps his greatest flick, he says, is his latest...

THE FILMMAKER RedShirt at work.

Wakinyan RedShirt has made three films in his life: Lego Star Wars, Bionicle Heroes, and The Wolf Show. But perhaps his greatest flick, he says, is his latest.

Not only did he get to be a crow (with a speaking part, no less: "k-kaw k-kaw"), he got to bang on a drum and shake a rattle for the musical score. He's five years old and already has his life mapped out: He wants to be a filmmaker.

"It's fun to make movies," he said, chewing on his sleeve. "They're interesting."

Wakinyan was sitting at a little table with little chairs at the Nuweetooun School in Exeter the other day talking about How Birds Got Their Song, a five-minute animated film that will be shown at the first Providence Children's Film Festival, which runs from February 12-15 at the Cable Car Cinema and the RISD Museum.

Many of the films, both shorts and features, are from around the world (Germany, France, India, even Cuba), but there are also local productions like Birds, a collaboration between RISD graduate and Providence filmmaker Jo Dery and the 12 students at Nuweetooun, a private K-8 school that focuses on Native American and environmental studies and hands-on learning geared toward children of Native descent.

The film's story, based on a folktale, is simple: The birds cannot croon. They hear the "Nahagansetts" (or Narragansetts) sing every morning to welcome the day and ask the Creator for a voice. The Creator tells them to fly to Sky World for the "gift of song." The birds find success; one bird, the woodland thrush, finds too much. She piggybacks on an eagle during her flight; she cheats. Her bird friends discover her trickery. Ashamed, she flees into the forest and there, alone in self-imposed exile, she sings only for herself.

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