These nature films usually convey the following assumption to the human viewer: this is what a natural family looks like, this is how you should behave. Their underlying narrative, however, is in fact a projection of human cultural ideologies woven into the images by means of the cinematic montage and the narrator’s voice.
For several years now, Guy Ben-Ner has been exploring video as an option for making home movies. This preoccupation stems from some moral dilemmas with which the artist is confronted: he can either work in the studio but spend his time away from his family, or be an exemplary father but away from the studio. The option of working at home with the kids has become a fruitful ‘compromise,’ and the video medium has become one of the best tools. It is as if saying: “I’m at home, but you have to pay the price.”

The current video is yet another chapter, another elaboration of these ideas. As a travelogue, it documents the family’s move to New York for studies (the ostriches migrate to a new habitat in search of food. They are migrants). The artist is particularly interested in the structure of the ostrich family unit, and in the fact that the father plays a very active role in guarding and incubating the eggs, and in raising the chicks after their hatching. (In fact, in professional literature, the male ostrich is sometimes described as a “male mother”).

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