Le Peuple Migrateur, known as Winged Migration in the United States and Canada, or The Travelling Birds in the United Kingdom, or The Travelling Birds: An adventure in flight in Australia, is an Academy Award nominated 2001 documentary film directed by Jacques Cluzaud, Michel Debats and Jacques Perrin (who was also one of the writers and narrators) showcasing the immense journeys routinely made by birds during their migrations.
The movie was shot over the course of four years on all seven continents. Shot using in-flight cameras, most of the footage is aerial, and the viewer appears to be flying alongside birds of successive species. They traverse every kind of weather and landscape, covering vast distances in a flight for survival.Much of the aerial footage was taken of "tame" birds. The filmmakers raised birds of several species, including storks and pelicans, from birth. The newborn birds imprinted on staff members, and were trained to fly along with the film crews. Several of these species had never been imprinted before. Film was shot from ultralights,paragliders and hot air balloons, as well as trucks, motorcycles, motorboats, remote-controlled robots, and a French Navy warship.(Wikipedia)
The making of this film is a story in itself and has been made in to a documentary "Peuple migrateur - Le making of, Le ".The documentary tells the story of the (french) people that dedicated 4 years of their lives to raise and take care of a number of different groups of birds. Because they raised the birds from the moment they left their eggs, the birds regarded them as their mother/father. This allowed the movie makers to films the birds in flight because the birds would follow their parents when they went flying in an ultralight plane. I really liked this documentary because it shows the dedication and love of a small group of people for "their" birds. The stories that these people tell of the what happened during the shooting of their film in Vietnam are touching!(IMDB)
