Judy Irving

Pelican Media Executive Director Judy Irving is a Sundance-and-Emmy-Award-winning filmmaker whose 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, Dark Circle, a personal film about the links between nuclear power and weapons, and Cold Refuge, about how swimming in open water mitigates life's challenges. In 2015 Judy was elected to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences Documentary Branch. Wild Parrots was a "Top Ten Film of the Year" (National Film Critics' Poll), was the highest-rated program on the national PBS series "Independent Lens," and is now in international distribution. Pelican Dreams screened in over 100 theaters and later streamed by Netflix. Dark Circle, which won the Grand Prize at Sundance and a National Emmy, was re-mastered in HD and re-released by First Run Features. Cold Refuge has just begun its flight to festivals and eventual distribution. Judy spent childhood summers on the North Fork of Long Island, and came to love birds thanks to her grandfather. She 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 Masters 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 most recent documentary, Cold Refuge.