Opening at the IFC Center this Friday* and at the Laemmle Monica Film Center in L.A. on January 17 is this documentary by Sally Aitken about author Terry Masea and her goals to save any injured hummingbird in Los Angeles, following her as she tries to rehabilitate the tiny, fragile birds back to healthy, running the Los Angeles Hummingbird Rescue since 2004. I don’t have a lot to say about this movie, except that it’s gorgeously shot, and the hummingbirds all have interesting stories as Masea nurses them back to health.

I saw Sally Aitken’s beautiful documentary Every Little Thing at Sundance last year and it had me at the Albert Hammond needle drop, grabbed my heart with all the sweet birds, and then proceeded to absolutely wreck me. The film profiles author and wildlife rehabber Terry Masear who has turned her home in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles into a rehabilitation center for injured hummingbirds. Masear is a deeply empathetic individual and it is hard to not to be moved by her love for these birds and the work that she does to help them.

We’re conditioned to think of nature documentaries as educational — probably because we watch them in school — but I think they’re more properly understood as generators of awe. You can’t easily see a cheetah or an octopus or an eagle in the wild, at least not for very long, but in a good movie you get to both observe and marvel.

The birds would seem to be the stars of director Sally Aitken's Every Little Thing, a documentary about an independent hummingbird rescue in Hollywood run by one determined woman. She's Terry Masear, a retired teacher who seems to have educated herself on everything one would need to or could know about hummingbirds. She has been rescuing the tiny creatures since 2004 without any pay for her work. Yes, the birds are special, but Masear isn't too far behind them.

Emmy-nominated director and writer Sally Aitken’s new documentary EVERY LITTLE THING is focused on one of the smallest inhabitants of Los Angeles, the hummingbird. The film’s protagonist is author Terry Masear, who runs a 24/7 hummingbird rescue operation out of her home. With precise cinematography, Aitken’s film shows us the grace of these small creatures, and of those who care for them. EVERY LITTLE THING will be released into theaters by Kino Lorber starting on January 10.

Hummingbirds are delicate creatures. Hummingbirds are warriors. Hummingbirds are still mysterious to us, animals that we can care for, and yet there’s so little we know about so many of their intricacies.

Sally Aitken’s documentary “Every Little Thing” literally generates buzz, and both those with a fondness for hummingbirds and those who never much thought about them are bound to be enchanted by its depiction of these tiny, fragile creatures.

Hummingbirds are described as “sweet warriors” by Terry Masear, a hummingbird rehabber in Los Angeles. She runs a center for the tiny, injured birds, and explains that while the smallest birds in the world are sweet, they are also fierce. Hummingbirds can flap their wings 50 times a second and fly vertically, backward and upside-down, but they will also fight to the death in nature. 

Some things seem to transcend reality despite living within it; they feel extraterrestrial, metaphysical, or simply fantastical. Call it the Kantian noumenon (or don't, your call). Hummingbirds are undoubtedly among these. Their wings beat 50 times per second on average (and up to 80 beats per second), using a complicated figure-eight motion that creates wake vortices beneath each wing. Like delightful little drones, they can hover almost perfectly still and move in any direction. The way they fly is more efficient than helicopters.

“It’s a hard world for small things,” says Lillian Gish’s Rachel Cooper in The Night of the Hunter. Those words come to mind while watching Sally Aitken’s modestly informative and gently profound Every Little Thing about a Los Angeles-based hummingbird rescue. If there’s any fault to be found in this aptly titled documentary (here, the concern for the minuscule extends to the film’s title being spelled in lower-case letters), it’s that it doesn’t exactly benefit from its formulaic voiceover and other supplementary audio.