San Diego filmmaker Elliott Kennerson has a long history with nature filmmaking, and his latest project — “Love Birds,” about lesbian seagulls — takes him down a familiar path. But with this one, he saw an opportunity he just couldn’t pass up.
“Natural history films have an unfortunate addiction, in my opinion, to storytelling that naturalizes human — stick with me — heteronormativity,” he said. “The stories tend to be about Papa Bear, Mama Bear and Baby Bear. You see a lot of Noah’s Ark, two-by-two, a lot of dating and romance and family. If you watch nature shows, you know what I mean.”
“I’m OK with anthropomorphism, but so often it’s bigotry masked as metaphor,” said Kennerson, who attended Del Mar Hills Academy and The Bishop’s School before pursuing a bachelor’s degree in archaeology from Yale and master’s in natural history filmmaking from Montana University. “Scientists are confirming more and more that what most people call normal in terms of gender and sexuality is not at all the norm in nature. In my opinion, it’s patently obvious that the sexually monogamous straight couple and the nuclear family are the actual unnatural state for our species. So yes, I saw the opportunity to tell a different story.”
George Hunt (back row, second from right), Molly Warner (back row, right) with filmmakers Elliott Kennerson (standing, left) and Angel Morris (front row, right), and crew members during filming of the documentary.(Perfect Four Productions)
The 27-minute documentary “Love Birds,” which he co-directed with now-Sweden-based filmmaker Angel Morris, explores the work of married couple and University of California Irvine researchers George Hunt and Molly Warner, who in 1972 made an unprecedented discovery while studying seagulls on Channel Islands off the California coast: about 14% of the gull pairs were comprised of two females. Their study, which pointed to widespread same-sex pairing in nature, sparked a cultural debate across the country when it was published in Science magazine in 1977.
The documentary — filmed on Santa Barbara Island, one of the Channel Islands — will be screened July 15 in a special Pride Week presentation by the San Diego Natural History Museum and the San Diego Bird Alliance. After the screening, Kennerson will talk about the film and share insights on why it’s important.
“The story is interesting to me as a historical blip that I would like younger generations of LGBTQ people to know about,” said Kennerson, an Emmy Award-winning writer, editor, producer and post-production specialist.
Kennerson, who was born in La Jolla and grew up in Del Mar, took some time from a film project in Wyoming to talk about “Love Birds,” which has been selected for nearly 40 film festivals and won many awards, including the Prix de Jury at the Féstival International du Film Ornithologique in Ménigoute, France.
Filmmakers Elliott Kennerson (second from right) and Angel Morris (right) with crew during filming of the documentary.
(Perfect Four Productions)
Q: Tell me about the genesis of this film and how it landed in your hands?
A: At the time, I was working with my co-director Angel Morris, who is also the film’s editor, at a San Diego production company (on the PBS series “Human Footprint”). Angel is a trans non-binary person, I’m a gay man, and we had gravitated to each other as both members of the LGBTQ community. There just aren’t that many of us in the natural history film industry. They came to me one day and said, “Did you know about the lesbian seagulls?” Which I did, because of the Beavis and Butthead movie from the ‘90s. But it turns out the story actually isn’t that well known.
Q: Did you already know much about the groundbreaking work by George Hunt and Molly Warner?
A: I did know about lesbian seagulls, but not the details or its importance as the first scientifically published about homosexual behavior in the animal kingdom. There is a book called “Biological Exuberance” that compiled all the published science on the subject up to 1999. Angel and I found George Hunt’s name in there. We put on our reporter hats and tracked them down, reached out, and lucky for us, they were willing to cooperate with us. By now, they both feel like family.
Q: When you first set out on the project, what was your main goal and how dedicated were you along the way to sticking to that goal?
A: Our initial goal was to bring this story to light for a new generation. At first, we thought we’d focus narrowly on the natural history of the birds and expected to use George and Molly merely as experts. But in so many ways, we kept lucking out on the story, and one stretch goal led to another. More and more layers of story revealed themselves, especially as we got to know George and Molly better. So as you can see in the film, the natural history drifted from the center of the film to the periphery, and we began to focus on George and Molly’s relationship and the context and significance of the discovery. Pivoting like that was an exhilarating process for me because I’ve always worked on TV shows where you don’t have as much flexibility.
Q: What was the most challenging part of working on this documentary?
A: Usually, if you ask a filmmaker that question, they’ll say finding funding. In this case, we didn’t have that problem. The film was funded by a single grant from NBC’s education wing, for which we consider ourselves lucky and we are so grateful. The biggest challenge logistically has been the fallout of Donald Trump’s presidency in the media landscape. Without going into detail, I’ll say that all of us in the media have been struggling to find a way forward, which has been a challenging thing to navigate on top of making the film. Any film is an endurance game — it’s not always as fun as people outside the business think it is. Sometimes it seemed almost impossible to keep going. So, in a different sense, it does come back to funding.
Editorially, the biggest challenge was giving the film a coherent throughline that interpreted the events for audiences in a comprehensible and entertaining way. There were so many directions we could have gone, so many aspects we might have focused on. But that challenge is the challenge that we love as filmmakers.
The documentary “Love Birds” explores the work of married biologists George Hunt and Molly Warner, who made an unprecedented discovery while studying seagulls on one of California’s Channel Islands. The film will be screened July 15 in a special Pride Week presentation by the San Diego Natural History Museum and the San Diego Bird Alliance. (Perfect Four Productions)
Q: The most rewarding?
A: The reception of the film has been beyond what we could have hoped. We did our best to tell a multilayered story, and to draw certain connections for audiences that we hope illuminate some big ideas that are as relevant now as ever. When people show us by their reactions or their words that they get that and the story lands, it is so gratifying. Awards are nice, too. We have qualified for Oscar consideration, which is pretty much a lifetime goal for any filmmaker.
Q: What are you working on now? What’s next?
A: Besides my work as a post-production supervisor on TV shows and other people’s cool projects, I’ve got three independent films underway. One is about Hawaii’s only endemic owl, called the Pueo, and the way queer native knowledge is changing the conversation about how to save it. The second is about pygmy seahorses, which are the size of your fingernail and live in coral. There’s a gay scientist racing to finish the job of describing them before habitat destruction wipes them out. The third film concerns the groundbreaking underground comix artist Joyce Farmer, who was doing dark feminist humor about abortion in comic book form right when Roe v. Wade came down.
The documentary “Love Birds” explores the work of married biologists George Hunt and Molly Warner, who made an unprecedented discovery while studying seagulls on one of California’s Channel Islands. The film will be screened July 15 in a special Pride Week presentation by the San Diego Natural History Museum and the San Diego Bird Alliance. (Perfect Four Productions)
Special screening of “Love Birds,” followed by conversation with filmmaker Elliott Kennerson
When: 7 p.m. July 15 (doors open at 6 p.m.)
Where: San Diego Natural History Museum, Giant Screen Theater, 1788 El Prado, San Diego
Tickets: $15
Online: bit.ly/LoveBirds-FilmScreening