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About HummingbirdFilms

HummingbirdFilms LLC is a leading-edge film and video production company located in the Hudson Valley of New York State. Owned and operated by award-winning independent filmmaker John Feldman, the company is currently focusing its efforts on documentaries in the arts and sciences.

This website contains information about John Feldman’s current productions as well as his complete portfolio of critically acclaimed and award-winning independent feature, educational, documentary and short films from 1968 to the present. On the portfolio page are links to watch many of them.

Works in Progress

The Gaia Perspective

Changing our worldviews with Fritjof Capra and his mentors
(Working Title)

This feature-length documentary turns to Fritjof Capra and his colleagues and mentors in a quest to uncover the cornerstones of a society that allows people to coexist in harmony with each other and with the natural world.

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Why Laugh

Speaking truth to power with clowns, masks, puppets, and banana peels
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Latest News

Documentary Works in Progress

Documentary Works in Progress

John is working on two new films – one on Fritjof Capra and the systems view of life (The Gaia Perspective) and the other on comedy, clowning, and why we laugh.

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Regenerating Life in Greece

Regenerating Life in Greece

On July 2, 2025, John participated in a screening of Regenerating Life in Greece at the International Prespa Walking Arts Encounters/Conference 2025.

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New on Youtube

In 2020, after I had begun interviews for my documentary about Fritjof Capra and his mentors, COVID abruptly shut down all travel. Not to be deterred, we turned to Zoom in order to continue working on the film. In December 2020, with the help of Alberto Rizzo in Argentina and Gustavo Rodrigues Rocha in Brazil, we videotaped a Zoom conversation between Brother David Steindl-Rast in Argentina, Fritjof Capra in California and myself in upstate New York. Brother David is a renowned scholar and Benedictine monk. He and Fritjof co-authored Belonging to the Universe (winner of the 1992 American Book Award), a dialogue on new paradigm thinking in science and theology. He was 94 when we recorded his conversation with Fritjof, and he impressed me with his warmth and his loving and enthusiastic manner. During our conversation, Brother David noted that at the core of all religions he found the same thing that physicists confronted in quantum physics: an encounter with mystery. --- Learn more about my new documentary, Fritjof Capra: Changing our worldviews with Fritjof Capra and his mentors (working title): https://hummingbirdfilms.com/gaiaperspective Donate to support film production: https://secure.givelively.org/donate/global-film-network-inc/the-gaia-perspective-rethinking-life-love-and-human-folly-with-fritjof-capra-and-his-mentors
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Encounter with Mystery | The Gaia Perspective

The Psyche of Nature (40 sec) Stephan Harding: We need to relate with something bigger than ourselves. Our ego, this little sense of self I've got now, it can feel so isolated and so alone. I mean, so many of us do in Western culture. And depressed, and anxious. It's spreading. More and more people are feeling it, because Western culture cuts you off from a sense of being connected to something larger than the ego, something larger than yourself, which is the psyche of nature, which is the Psyche. --- Learn more about Stephan Harding in our new film, The Gaia Perspective: Changing our worldviews with Fritjof Capra and his mentors (working title). The world is experiencing increasing violence and societal breakdown. How can we respond? This feature-length documentary turns to scientist and author Fritjof Capra and his colleagues and mentors – each a maverick thinker in their field — in a quest to uncover the cornerstones of a society that allows people to coexist in harmony with each other and with the natural world. Donate today to support the production of the film: https://hummingbirdfilms.com/gaiaperspective We are excited to announce that we have received an offer from a generous donor to double every contribution made through the end of October up to a maximum of $10,000. This is the perfect time to make a donation so we can get to work completing the production of The Gaia Perspective!
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The Psyche of Nature - The Gaia Perspective

Stephan Harding: Western culture is not wise. It's full of cleverness, it's very clever. We're very clever at making cameras and airplanes and all sorts of things. very clever, but we're very unwise. I mean, the evidence is climate change and biodiversity loss and the destruction of the planet and the destruction of traditional peoples and their languages and their cultures. I mean, a wise culture would never behave like that towards its own body, the Earth, or towards its own peoples. -- Stephan Harding is one of the Amazing thinkers to be featured in the new documentary, The Gaia Perspective: Changing our Worldviews with Fritjof Capra and his mentors (working title.) In order to complete the film, we need your help - Donate today: https://secure.givelively.org/donate/... Learn more about the Gaia Perspective at Hummingbirdfilms.com/gaiaperspective #StephanHarding #thegaiaperspective #gaia
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Clever not Wise - The Gaia Perspective

Getting in touch with Gaia (45 seconds) Narrator/John Feldman: For my new film, The Gaia Perspective, I asked Stephan Harding: How does one actually get in touch with Gaia? Stephan Harding: You can feel the air, and you can see trees, and you can see the ocean, you can see fish, you can see microbes down a microscope. These are things ... ecology deals with things you can see and sense directly. That's why I think ecology is the central doorway for our culture, back into the great self of nature. Narrator/John Feldman: And that great self of nature is Gaia. --- The Gaia Perspective takes us on a journey of discovery, problem solving, and healing. This feature-length documentary turns to scientist and author Fritjof Capra and his colleagues and mentors – each a maverick thinker in their field — in a quest to uncover the cornerstones of a society that allows people to coexist in harmony with each other and with the natural world. Learn more at: https://hummingbirdfilms.com/gaiaperspective/ #ecology #StephanHarding #thegaiaperspective
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Getting in touch with Gaia - The Gaia Perspective

John Feldman (narrator): For my new film, The Gaia Perspective, I'll turn once again to Lynn Margulis' wisdom. Lynn Margulis: So that life is a connected phenomenon through space. There's no such thing as a fully independent organism because every organism requires food to be delivered and waste to be removed. So that it's a system on the surface of the Earth. Fritjof Capra: From a system's point of view, there can only be interdependence; every part is dependent on other parts. And that's the core of systems thinking. Lynn Margulis: Gaia is run by the sum of the biota. And therefore, you can lose enormous numbers and great diversity with mass extinctions, but you never come anywhere near losing everything. These great extinctions are tests of Gaia, and the system bounces back. ---- Lynn Margulis is one of the Amazing thinkers to be featured in the new documentary, The Gaia Perspective: Changing our Worldviews with Fritjof Capra and his mentors (working title.) In order to complete the film, we need your help - Donate today: https://secure.givelively.org/donate/global-film-network-inc/the-gaia-perspective-rethinking-life-love-and-human-folly-with-fritjof-capra-and-his-mentors Learn more about the Gaia Perspective at Hummingbirdfilms.com/gaiaperspective #LynnMargulis #fritjofcapra #TheGaiaPerspective #lynnmargulis #Jameslovelock #TheGaiaperspective #fritjofcapra
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The System Bounces Back

Lynn Margulis: The point is that the waste of one is the food of the other, and that's how the ecosystem goes around. And if we didn't have the waste of one being the food of the other, we would be drowning, as we are, in the urine or feces equivalent of the production. Now, these bacteria have solved that issue. People haven't solved it at all. People are in the growing stage, and the ruining stage. People are ruining their environment. These bacteria are producing an environment that's livable. So I think we have lots to learn from them. -- Lynn Margulis is one of the Amazing thinkers to be featured in the new documentary, The Gaia Perspective: Changing our Worldviews with Fritjof Capra and his mentors (working title.) In order to complete the film, we need your help - Donate today: https://secure.givelively.org/donate/global-film-network-inc/the-gaia-perspective-rethinking-life-love-and-human-folly-with-fritjof-capra-and-his-mentors Learn more about the Gaia Perspective at Hummingbirdfilms.com/gaiaperspective
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Learning from Bacteria with Lynn Margulis

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