Parrot Kindergarten | Friday, October 24 | 4 pm | Palace Theatre | Friday Harbor

A highlight of the upcoming Friday Harbor film festival will be the screening of Parrot Kindergarten a documentary about Jen, an attorney and cult survivor who heals by teaching her parrot to read. Award-winning filmmaker Amy Herdy of San Juan Island directed the documentary. Herdy and Cali Bagby of Orcas Island were among the producers.   TRAILER 

Islanders may remember Herdy's 2018 documentary, The Bleeding Edge, shown at the 6th annual Friday Harbor Film Festival in 2018.  The film investigated corruption in the medical device industry. Legislative change resulted and dangerous devices were removed from the market. 

Herdy is known for her investigative documentaries  about such topics as Supreme Court corruption, sexual assault on campus and military bases.  In an interview, San Juan Islander editor asked how her latest work fits in, she said, "It's a pivot. It absolutely is a pivot."

"That's one of the things that I love about it the most because it's joyful, right? There are parts of it that are very emotional, but the overall tone of it is connection and love and creativity and joy. And it is such a departure from the typical dark investigative work that I do that it really rejuvenated me. I love this film," she said.

The film's synopsis - Parrot Kindergarten is a documentary about Jen, an attorney and cult survivor who heals by teaching her parrot, Ellie, to read. Through groundbreaking research in interspecies communication, Jen redefines animal cognition and fosters deeper human-parrot connections. Her "Parrot Kindergarten" classes teach owners to enhance bonds with their feathered companions, improving lives on both sides. This film reveals how communication transcends species, offering fresh insights into animal intelligence and the emotional fulfillment of cross-species relationships. 

Herdy first heard about Jen through an email forwarded to her by her agent.  The email mentioned Jen's experience in a cult. 

Herdy said, "And then when I started looking into it, I said, well, this is so much more than a story about a woman who was in a cult. And this is a story about her relationship with her parrot. And this is a story about her journey and really her fight to get her parrot's sentience, you know, intelligence recognized by science." 

"I still wasn't convinced that it was worth trying to do a documentary on until her answer to one very pivotal question. When I said, did anyone ever try to discourage you from what you were doing? Where, you know, did you come under fire? You know, anything of that nature? And she said, oh my gosh, oh my gosh."

"She started relaying to me all the ways that she had been told, no, you can't do it. And all the ways that she's been told that can't be done - parrots aren't that intelligent - from the hate mail that she would get on social media -  to other researchers telling her that it can't be done to - her own internal doubts and fears that she wasn't somehow smart enough or capable enough to push that science forward."

"...And I think Jen's story is inspirational...It's this woman's transformation of being so harmed by the cult and feeling like she did not have a voice to feeling so committed to the voice of her bird that she pushed the science forward. And she, and she did it in this very resolute way. And she did it by putting aside her own doubts and fears and feelings of inadequacy."

"...We followed her on that journey and she really had to prove it and her team had to prove it. And it's one of the first times that a parrot has been proven capable of intentional communication, right? In a very, very long time, in decades. And she joins the ranks of other animals who have broken that ground, like Coco the gorilla."

The paper, "Communication Functions in Speech Board Use by a Goffin's Cockatoo: Implications for Research and Design" was published by Association for Computing Machinery in December 2024. 

Parrot Kindergarten will be screened at 4 pm Friday, October 24, 2025 at the Palace Theatre in Friday Harbor.

Herdy will moderate the Film Makers Forum at 10 am Saturday, October 25 at San Juan Island Grange in Friday Harbor.