Lords of The Wing

Nearly ten years in the making, The Crimson Wing follows the lives and deaths of the flamingos of Lake Natron, a Northern Tanzanian salt lake uninhabitable for humankind, and one under threat from proposed soda ash mining. The film features some of the most astonishing cinematography you will see this year, thanks to the hardy and blistering work of its three filmmakers: co-directors Matthew Aeberhard and Leander Ward; and screenwriter Melanie Finn. “The crew was the three of us, so we were always multi-tasking” Melanie told me. “I wasn’t doing much writing, I was running the entire camp, which is incredibly brutal work!”. Matthew concurs: “It was a nightmare”! Ward elaborates on the harsh shooting conditions: “I knew there was an active volcano there, I knew it was overdue: I had dreams of this volcano erupting. We had a month of earthquakes, we had about twenty of them a day. And the heat there can kill you if you’re not prepared for it”. Surely a worthwhile experience, though? “Absolutely”, Matthew says.

Aeberhard is a seasoned wildlife cinematographer, his chiselled appearance and sturdy demeanour a testament to his hardworking attitude and passion for the natural world. “I worked for a guy called Hugo van Lawick who mentored me as a cinematographer. Hugo was married to Jane Goodall (legendary primatologist), and they lived in the Serengeti for many years, and he always said to me if you don’t do a film on the Serengeti you should do a film on Lake Natron, which neighbours Serengeti. So I used to make occasional forays out there, climb the mountain and explore the location, so I knew it, and as a location I felt it had everything: it has a great river valley, it has an active volcano, it has this lake which is like a mirror of the sky, with the spectacular sight of these flamingos, like the ornithological equivalent of the wildebeest migration. But no one knows about it, which is crazy, so we felt we had everything there to tell a story that would suit the big screen, with wonderful backdrops and a simple story that we could layer with a number of different meanings”. This approach to the material is one Kenyan raised Finn, an author and journalist new to wildlife filmmaking (her first date with now partner Aeberhard was a trip to Lake Natron) describes as “poetic, not prosaic”. “I felt there was a real fairytale when I looked at this. We’re all familiar with fairy tales, it’s a way of having a story move forward and you can follow it instinctively, so when things happen you don’t have to explain them. The idea of life and death and death feeding back into life, it’s a grown up fairytale but it’s something we can relate to. And so that really allowed us to pull back on the narration and just let people follow the story. The origins of our storytelling have all come from nature, this is where we’ve got all our cliché characters from so why not play on that a little”.

This unconventional approach was one Aeberhard was keen to stress. “There’s a certain language that people define wildlife programmes with, a certain style and it becomes self-reinforcing. I’ve spent a lot of time in the wild and I feel that nature means more than that. It’s not something we need to objectify. If you’ve been to Africa, or even if you’ve just taken a walk in the forest, when you see the sun rise, it doesn’t need an explanation: you can just forge these emotional connections, and I feel that’s important for wildlife filmmakers, that’s what we should be doing”. The filmmakers used pioneering hovercraft technology to achieve the kind of shots never captured before, but they also recorded live sound and invited the Cinematic Orchestra’s Jason Swinscoe to breathe in Natron’s atmosphere first hand in preparation for their scoring of the film. How did this collaboration come about? “When I was living in LA” Ward explains, “someone turned me onto them, and I really liked it but it was very jazzy, I couldn’t imagine it for Natron. But their last album, La Fleur, really triggered something in me. If you just put that music to these images you just go: wow!”

Ward is an experienced wildlife cameraman with roots in drama: one of his most memorable collaborations was with Scottish director Donald Camell on his ill-fated swansong, Wild Side. “One of the things working with Donald showed me was – and this was of course during a very difficult time in his life - just do something different, always strive to find new angles for things. So with this film, it’s not about what the animals do but what that means to us, what nature means to us”. The Crimson Wing of course has a very strong ecological message.

The fate of Lake Natron and its flamingo population could be at stake, but Ward is optimistic: “We didn’t embed the conservation issues within the film because we just wanted this to be a beautiful film that people would respond to. We do feel that by making this film we’ve put some pressure on the company that was going to mine the lake into re-thinking their ways, and I understand that project’s been iced for the time being”. “Film is a great way to raise awareness. It doesn’t necessarily have to be so political in its content, anyone can learn about something they know nothing about. And that’s conservation itself; it’s conservation through appreciation of something”. Aeberhard adds “We didn’t want this to be an anthropomorphised sentimental thing or a biology study. Nature’s not something you need to measure. I feel it’s those feelings that underpin all conservation; unless people feel a connection it has no relevance”.

The film was enthusiastically received at this year’s Edinburgh International Film Festival, and the filmmakers have been surprised and enlightened by the response. “The choice of making a poetic film” Finn says “meant we were aiming for an older children’s audience - teenagers upwards, almost a non traditional wildlife audience - but it’s remarkable that kids have really loved it. We just did a screening of this for 500 children and at the end it was question time and every kid was raising their hand!”. The Crimson Wing has found one famous fan in a very unexpected place, however, and with a link to Ward’s past. “It’s funny talking about Donald, because having gotten back from Africa I needed a place to live in London. I found a place in Notting Hill and went to meet my landlady to sign up for the flat. It turns out she was Nic Roeg’s wife and Nic Roeg was my neighbour, and I just showed him the film on Saturday night and he loved it! So it was a really strange sort of cycle”. Not unlike that legendary life cycle that runs through this terrific film, a true thing of wonder and humanity.