A Black Rail's Tale

A tiny Black Rail guides us through South Carolina’s former rice plantations, revealing how landscapes engineered by enslaved people have become a refuge for one of North America’s rarest birds. Seldom heard and even more rarely seen, a Black Rail is a small and secretive bird who makes its home in the vast landscape of wild and abandoned rice fields of South Carolina, originally built through the stolen expertise and forced labor of enslaved Africans. The film weaves together art, history, landscape and ecology, and was created by award-winning animator Lynn Tomlinson, and poet and cultural ornithogist J. Drew Lanham, with music composed by acclaimed guitarist Yasmin Williams. This unique animated documentary was executive produced by BirdStory and the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.