The animal kingdom’s smallest avian – the hummingbird – becomes the focus of Sally Aitken’s documentary. Actually, its truer subject is Terry Masear, who runs a hummingbird rescue hotline and rehab out of her Los Angeles home. Screening as part of AFS Cinema’s Science on Screen series, the evening will include a conversation with a Central Texas hummingbird expert. But birders aren’t the only audience for this festival favorite: The film illustrates, as Masear put it in a recent Vanity Fair interview, how “small acts of compassion are acts of greatness.” A meaningful reminder in a time when smallness and meanness dominate the news cycle. – Kimberley Jones
