Each year, the swallow commonly known as the purple martin makes a roughly 5,000-mile journey between North and South America. For his short film Exit 328, the US director Henry Davis documented thousands of these birds roosting in a somewhat unlikely rest area – a strip mall in Austin, Texas – alongside the makeshift human community of locals and dedicated birders that had formed beneath them. Over the course of a week, he filmed the birds making a temporary home in this most human of environments, alongside the eclectic concerns of the people below – from the birds’ safety, to the unpleasant prospect of being defecated on from above. Yet, there’s a peculiar beauty in these dissonances. Observing this convergence of time, place, perspective and species, Davis finds a strange electricity in this moment, which, while documented here, will never quite be replicated.

How to adventure beyond the same old foods
Most of us develop comfort zones with food. Expand your palate and discover new flavours, techniques and connections
by Nina Mukerjee Furstenau