Hummingbird's Wings

Experimental short bridging the gap between live action and animation, documentary and poetry.

  • Dustin Grella
    Director
    Prayers for Peace, Animation Hotline (2012), Animation Hotline (2015)
  • Miriam Atkin
    Writer
  • Thatcher Keats
    Narrator
    Christmas, Again (2014)
  • Dustin Grella
    Animators
  • Lena Greene
    Animators
  • Dustin Grella
    Editor
  • Dustin Grella
    Makers
  • Tony Watkins
    Makers
  • Lena Greene
    Makers
  • Constance Armellino
    Makers
  • Project Type:
    Animation, Experimental, Short
  • Genres:
    Poetry
  • Runtime:
    1 minute 47 seconds
  • Completion Date:
    July 27, 2020
  • Production Budget:
    3,600 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Country of Filming:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Shooting Format:
    2K
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
  • High Coast Animation Festival
    Nordingrå
    Sweden
    European, Sweden
    Best Animation
Director Biography - Dustin Grella

Dustin Grella is an animator and documentary filmmaker whose work attempts to glean glimpses of colorful insight into the seemingly mundane. His films have screened at the Cannes Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, and won the Walt Disney Award at the Ottawa International Animation Festival. His film "Prayers for Peace" screened at almost two hundred festivals worldwide and won over forty awards. He has written and mailed himself a letter every day for almost twenty years and has over seven thousand sealed letters neatly filed and categorized. He is currently in production of the Animation Hotline, a series of micro-animations where he uses crowd-sourced voicemail messages for content. If you've got a story give him a call at 212-683-2490.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

Hummingbird's Wings was a collaboration with poet Miriam Atkins that started out as a long conversation about animation and how animation works. At first Miriam didn't understand the process, but after the conversation she wrote this poem about the perception of time in reference to animation. I'd had this idea to create a walk cycle cut out of giant sheets of cardboard and slowly speeding up the frame rate for a while and used this poem as the catalyst to try out the idea. It's one of my favorite pieces because of how well the poem meshes with the images on the screen, both technically and conceptually.