Judith Irving

Judy Irving is a Sundance-and-Emmy-Award-winning filmmaker and executive director of Pelican Media. Her theatrical credits include The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, a feature documentary about the relationship between a homeless street musician and a flock of wild parrots in San Francisco; Pelican Dreams, about California brown pelicans and the people who know them best; and Dark Circle, a personal film about the links between nuclear power and weapons. In 2015 Judy was invited to become a voting member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences. Wild Parrots was a “Top Ten Film of the Year” (National Film Critics’ Poll), was the highest-rated program on the 2007 national PBS series “Independent Lens,” and is now in international distribution. Pelican Dreams (completed in late 2014), features a young brown pelican who mistakenly landed — tired, hungry, and confused — on the roadway of the Golden Gate Bridge, creating a spectacular traffic jam and re-igniting Judy’s years’-long fascination with these ancient, charismatic birds. Pelican Dreams has been distributed to more than 100 cities nationwide, received a 95% “Fresh” rating on the national film critics' site, Rotten Tomatoes, and is Available on DVD/digital platforms. Irving graduated from Connecticut College with a degree in psychology and worked as a freelance journalist in Montreal before hitchhiking across the continent and living on a handmade raft-house in British Columbia. Later, she received her master’s in film and broadcasting from Stanford University, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in Film. Her documentary film career has taken her to Alaska, Japan, Russia, Nepal, and Zimbabwe, with peace and the environment as her main areas of interest. Somehow, birds seem to show up in every movie. Judy’s six-film documentary series about the San Francisco Bay Area’s wildlife and open space led to her interest in the wild parrot flock flying the city's north waterfront, and her habit of swimming year-round in the bay led to her documentary, 19 Arrests, No Convictions, about a bartender who “escapes” from Alcatraz by swimming, which premiered in 2008.

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Judith Irving

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