Can These Documentaries Save Public Libraries and Bat Populations?
A pair of feature documentaries premiering this week have several things in common. Female filmmakers made both of these films. San Francisco happens to be the stomping grounds for these two films’ directors. Different forms of woman power get celebrated in these films. Most importantly, both films concern subjects endangered in different ways by the depredations of the Orange Felon and his gang of right-wing goons.
Free For All: The Public Library
Readers who’ve paid attention to the news will already be familiar with some of the threats facing the public library, the subject of Dawn Logsdon and Lucie Faulknor’s Free For All: The Public Library. Book bans rationalized by the insincere “protecting the children” song and dance essentially employ a simplistic paternalism which will leave future generations less mentally able to adapt to the world’s changes. Funding cuts to libraries not only undermine the public library’s aim of making information free and available, but contribute to making information a commodity exploitable for greedheads’ gain.
Lodgson and Faulknor’s film makes its national broadcast premiere on April 29, 2025 on the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) documentary series Independent Lens. But those who miss that broadcast date can stream it off the PBS website. PBS, needless to say, is also currently under attack by both the Orange Felon and the Swasticar Maker.
Free For All aims to get viewers to understand the public library as far more than just a place where books are stored and free access to the Internet is available. As they put it, public libraries “are where communities are built, where futures are imagined, and where dignity is upheld.” This encomium delivers far more substance than the Orange Tyrant’s empty hyperbole. It’s totally justified once the viewer joins the film in diving into the colorful history of American public libraries. Viewers will learn about the Free Library Movement and visit some of the communities uplifted by public libraries.
Recounting that history means talking about the colorful (mostly female) librarians who helped shape the history of this civic institution over the years. These women include New York Lower East Side librarian Ernestine Rose, who helped pioneer the idea of having library collections with non-English language material, and Regina Andrews, who turned an uptown library branch into the literary and artistic hub of the Harlem Renaissance.
Free For All also provides a tour around America of public libraries both big and small. The venues seen in the film range from a Louisiana bookmobile operating in East Baton Rouge to the halls of the Library of Congress. From California to Wisconsin, or from New York to Oregon, get ready to see the variety of these community beacons. The film may not take viewers to the more than 100 libraries Logsdon saw in every U.S. state by the time she was 12, but Free For All will give a good taste of the ways these civic institutions work to make knowledge publicly available to their communities.
By the time the film’s last frame is shown, viewers will understand why public libraries are worth preserving and that they’ll want to do their part to ensure future generations will have a free place open to anyone interested in encountering a universe of ideas.
The Invisible Mammal
Interestingly enough, local director Kristin Tieche did some work on Free For All at one point. If her name sounds familiar to long-time Broke-Ass readers, it’s because she wrote a piece for this website on a bike trip to see bats in Golden Gate Park.
Now Tieche makes her feature film debut with The Invisible Mammal. This film about bats will have its World Premiere at the 2025 DocLands Documentary Film Festival. The screening takes place at 12:00 PM on May 3, 2025 at the Smith Rafael Film Center.
Tieche’s film might be described as showing that you don’t need to be Bruce Wayne to love bats. Thanks to gorgeous 4K slow-motion cinematography from the likes of Skip Hobbie, the viewer will be able to see for themselves the beauty of bats in flight. The footage captured of Mexican freetail bats is particularly impressive given that these mammals may weigh in the neighborhood of 4 to 12 ounces yet can fly a distance of 150 miles.
If that’s not enough to start developing a love for bats, the bat rescuer storyline in The Invisible Mammal might do the job. Davis, CA-based rescuer Quirky Quirk has found a newborn bat, and this storyline follows Quirk’s efforts to raise the young bat until it’s big enough to survive on its own in the wild. Lots of closeups of this young mammal’s face may bring on the viewer’s warm fuzzies.
The film’s central storyline involves the efforts of U.C. Santa Clara’s Dr. Winifred Frick to save America’s bat population from extinction thanks to a decimating fungal disease known as “white nose syndrome.” Pseudogymnoascus destructans, or Pd for short, may make affected bats look as if their noses had been dipped into talcum powder. But there’s nothing funny about the way Pd-infected bats prematurely burn up their fat reserves before winter’s over so that they wind up starving to death fruitlessly hunting the moths or other insects they eat to survive. Dr. Frick hopes to save these endangered mammals with a project called Operation Fat Bat.
Seeing the work done by Dr. Frick and her colleagues highlights the “women in science” thread of Tieche’s film. The expected story of women fighting to do science despite sexist men’s interference doesn’t apply here. As the director explains, the field of bat biology is generally dominated by women. So when the viewer sees Dr Frick and her all-woman team doing science, it’s a chronicle of a more collaborative dynamic that isn’t captured often enough on film.
The existence of The Invisible Mammal is an against the odds miracle. The film was funded not by large donors such as the pre-Orange Fascist federal government, but by small dollar donors. The global lockdown resulting from COVID necessitated shutting down the production until people could be filmed in person. COVID also led to Tieche having a section in the film explaining why there is no connection between bats and the coronavirus.
So what can viewers inspired by Tieche’s documentary do to help restore America’s bat populations? Donate to Bat Conservation International, an organization Dr. Frick works with, as the Orange Fascist’s campaign to eliminate federal funding of non-politically motivated scientific research has hit this organization as well. Or, if the viewer has the space, they can buy a bat house from the website of “The Invisible Mammal.”
Finally, for interested viewers and Broke-Ass readers, Tieche definitely wants to do another bikes and bats tour of Golden Gate Park this year.
(For readers interested in further information about “Free For All: The Public Library,” go here
(For readers interested in ordering tickets for the premiere of “The Invisible Mammal,” go here. For readers interested in further information about the film, go here.)
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