Director Alex Karpovsky is fascinated with extraordinary birds, regardless of the presence of feathers or bills. Indeed he is so fascinated with them that he set his new film, Woodpecker, in the bosom of birdwatching's newest mecca, Brinkley, Arkansas, amidst throngs of Ivory Billed Woodpecker enthusiasts, the townies who have a love/hate relationship with this group of fanatical treasure hunters and the bird on which they pin all of their hopes and dreams.

As a follow up to his award-winning debut, The Hole Story, Karpovsky has taken the true-to-life, documentary-worthy search for this specific breed of majestic fowl, a formally declared endangered species (although most experts consider it to be extinct), and injected it with the existential suffering of our fictional lead Johnny Neander, played by true-to-life, documentary-worthy character Jon e. Hyrns. As we follow Johnny's half-assed attempts to discover the holy grail of feathered friends, we increasingly encounter the possibility that the fence between endangered and extinct is a subjective line in the ever shifting sands of personal truth, and is based on the context of one's own experience. People's perception of fiction and non-fiction is continually blurred, both on screen and off, by their own expectations and hopes, and the subsequent need to fit what we think we see into the tidy little box that we have created to hold our own individual reality.

Karpovsky was selected as one of the “25 New Faces of Independent Film” by Filmmaker Magazine in 2006 and shortlisted for the “Someone to Watch” Independent Spirit Award in 2007, solidifying his status as one the most promising up-and-coming talents in both the directing and acting worlds. Luckily for us, Karpovsky left his frigid home in Boston for the sunnier shores of Lady Bird Lake, meaning that Austin can now look forward to experiencing the continued observance and documentation of strange and extraordinary "birds" with our newly native son.

Woodpecker will have its World Premiere Saturday, March 8th at the Alamo Ritz as part of the SXSW Film Festival. More info at the Film Threat / B-Side SXSW Guide.