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1985-04-01
N/A
14 min
Up is a 1984 American short film directed by Mike Hoover and Tim Huntley. The film depicts a man who sets a hawk free, then tries to find it in the wild on his hang glider. In 1985, it won an Oscar for Best Short Subject at the 57th Academy Awards.
First things first: if you are all acrophobic then this is definitely not for you! It starts out with a man releasing - rather emotionally - his hawk and then taking to the skies in an hang glider as he tries to find it again. We begin over some beautifully snowy mountain tops, then fly over some wind-carved desert scenery as Ed Cesar (and occasionally an accompanying film-maker) rides the thermals as if he, himself, were feathered. He even manages to take an initially quite startled young lad for a flight, too. There’s no narration, just some natural audio and an unremarkably synthesised soundtrack to keep us company as we follow his effortless movements through the sky and one unnerving landing atop a stack where I felt one gust of wind could have been game over. Did he find the bird? Well I’m not sure given we did all of this in fourteen minutes that it just didn’t find itself a rabbit somewhere and settle down to wait for the edit, but in any case that’s a edit that is simple and surprisingly exhilarating.
