Audubon on screen
By Carol Wheeler September 5, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

Fall Film Festival
John Jay Audubon: Drawn from Nature
Tue, Sep 9, 3pm
Teatro Santa Ana
Biblioteca Pública
Insurgentes 25
50 pesos, free to members

John James Audubon’s film biography, part of the PBS American Masters Series, opens Audubon de México’s Fall Film Festival. Audubon was born in 1785 in Haiti, the son of a French naval officer and a Spanish Creole from Louisiana who died when he was an infant.

He was raised in France but emigrated to America at the age of 18. His father encouraged his interest in birds. “He would point out [their] elegant movement...and the beauty and softness of their plumage....”

Early on, Audubon set out to study American birds with the goal of reproducing their appearance in a more realistic way than had been done so far. He conducted the first known bird-banding on the continent, tying yarn to the legs of the Eastern Phoebes and learning that they returned to the same nests year after year.

Audubon saw more of the North American continent than virtually anyone of his time and came to stand for the America of the wilderness and wild things in general, as well as becoming The Big Name in birds from his time to ours. He was a self-taught artist and a self-made man whose life was filled with action and contradiction. He played the debonair European when he visited the American frontier and the wild woodsman in the drawing rooms of Europe. As an artist and naturalist his achievements were monumental. His iconic book, Birds of America, an astonishing collection of 435 life-size prints, was the largest book printed in the nineteenth century. Audubon created the book in its entirety; he was not only the artist, but also the writer, publisher and promoter. His early subscribers included the kings of England and France.

Audubon members may attend this film (and all subsequent films of the festival) at no charge; others pay 50 pesos. Those who join Audubon at the door for 300 pesos will be admitted free to this film and to all Audubon events for the year.