‘Godwit!’ follows the journey of our national bird with majestic aerial shots

The black-tailed godwit chicks squeak alarmedly in the opening scene filmed from the nest of Black-tailed godwit! The journey of our national bird† Logical: a little further on the meadow, a colossal mowing machine is doing its jobs. The threatening growl of the colossus, getting closer and louder, drowns out the chicks. And then the machine mows just past the nest. Escaped the horror. Gijs Scholten van Aschat, the pleasant narrator of the new nature film by ecologist and filmmaker Ruben Smit (including The new wilderness), treats the viewer to the necessary Black-tailed Godwit knowledge, calm and fatherly.

It is our bird: more than three quarters of the Northern and Western European population breeds here, in the Dutch polder. The waders moved in the pace of the peoples: when the peat swamp was cleared, the black-tailed godwit saw his chance. Because why should you stay a swamp bird when you can also be a meadow bird? The strain peaked in the 1960s and 1970s. Now only a quarter of it remains; the habitat is threatened by global warming, drought and intensification of agriculture.

Filmed in seven countries Black-tailed godwit! follows the annual journey of the long-billed bird, which was declared the national bird species in a 2015 bird conservation election, ahead of the blackbird and the house sparrow. We see majestic aerial shots of the migration: the black-tailed godwits depart from their winter destination in Senegal, where the rice-seed pecking birds are considered a pest by farmers. They fly kilometers high above West Africa, before making their first European stop at the Portuguese Tagus Delta.

The documentary repeats itself here and there: another bird of prey circling above the black-tailed godwits, again with the standard musical accompaniment, the threatening drums. But filmmaker Smit also takes an original narrative track, by threading his black-tailed godwit portrait with images of Dutch farming. Black-tailed godwit! is an alarming film, with the scaling-up of agriculture as a great evil; nowhere does biodiversity deteriorate as on farmland. In addition, the film also has an eye for smaller, sympathetic livestock farmers, such as farmer Piet and farmer Wim, who do everything they can to spare the birds. If necessary, they spray on ditch water to keep their grasslands sufficiently moist during the breeding season. His film also shows how the black-tailed godwit is feeling more and more senang in warming and ever greener Iceland: our national bird species is not too attached to national borders.

Ruben Smit breathed new (cinema) life into Dutch nature film in 2013 with the audience hit The new wilderness, in which the Oostvaarderplassen were portrayed in a BBC Earth-worthy manner. He made the film with fellow director Mark Verkerk, after which their ways parted after some friction. The two now form two somewhat competing pillars within the nature genre, which rose (worldwide) with the arrival of larger televisions and smaller cameras, and has also been experiencing a boom in the Netherlands for years. Smit directed, among other things, Wad: surviving on the border of water and landVerkerk signed for Holland: nature in the delta plus the urban nature film The Wild City† He is now working on a cinema film about the nature of Aruba, Bonaire and Curaçao.

By now, all nature in the Netherlands seems to have been captured, especially if it has also been postponed due to covid after the summer Wolf will be in the cinemas, the documentary by Cees van Kempen about the return of our largest predator, with the narration of Matthijs van Nieuwkerk.

No, says ecologist and filmmaker Smit firmly over the phone. ‘There is still a lot to do for nature film-makers in the Netherlands. Species are disappearing. I would very much like to make a film about the microcosm, we have never made anything like it in the Netherlands: a great cinema film about insects.’ Smit does not automatically think of the endangered honey bee. “That bee is always mentioned. But what do you think about mites? Or springtails, which are a kind of small beetles. Or the earthworm? And in that film I want to show what humans do: the effect of poison. Horrible!’

Smit (51) had to drastically limit filming for a few years after he was badly affected by Lyme disease, after a tick bite probably contracted during his work. He is relieved now Black-tailed godwit! is finally in cinemas, in more than seventy screens. And also a little frustrated. ‘Releasing a nature film in the Netherlands is almost impossible. I don’t get any support from the Film Fund, never have. At the Film Fund, they do not regard nature films as full-fledged productions (the Film Fund says it is open to all types and genres, ‘including nature documentaries’). So I went hopelessly deep into debt, yet another mortgage on my house. Black-tailed godwit! could well be my last film.’