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.

The most amazing thing about the recurring slow-motion sequences of hovering hummingbirds in Every Little Thing is the stillness of their tiny heads, even as their wings flap and their little bodies shift in air. As Terry Masear tells us, among other remarkable things, the wings of a hummingbird flap fifty times per second. She rightly asks, how can you know this and not tap into some magical realism? It might be said that those who do tap into magical realism in our world have much of it in themselves.

There are two species of birds that always leave me awe-struck when I see them in person. One is the majestic bald eagle, a large bird of prey, and the other is the hummingbird, the smallest bird in the world.

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