No one envies Generation Z. Born into a nihilist miasma of global warming, school shootings, Donald Trump, ubiquitous porn, and greedy billionaires, they live a life both sheltered and brutalized. Bird Sanctuary, a film by a collective of New Paltz youth, tells a story of this generation. It will be shown at the Denizen Theatre in New Paltz on April 19 at 5pm.
Myles Flusser, the writer and director of the film, grew up in New Paltz. He made videos in his backyard as a child, but became serious about filmmaking in high school, partly due to an influential teacher, Jennifer Cone. Cone’s class made short films that would play each morning with the daily announcements throughout New Paltz High School.
Flusser studied film production at the Rochester Institute of Technology, then returned to his hometown after graduating in 2023. He is now 25.
Bird Sanctuary follows a group of friends right after high school, and examines the evolution of their relationships during that crucial time. It was filmed over two-and-a-half years: 2019 to 2022. “We were all very inexperienced and learning, so we wanted to hold back any extraneous elements, to focus on the performance and storytelling,” Flusser explains. “Everyone’s costumes were just the regular clothes that they would wear. We filmed in our houses, and the bird sanctuary was just a place where we hung out all the time.” (The bird sanctuary in question is the Nyquist-Harcourt Wildlife Sanctuary, a 56-acre site on Huguenot Street in New Paltz.)
A bird sanctuary protects frail creatures from the dangerous outer world. Teenagers, too, are frail creatures.
Most of the shooting was done during two summers and a winter. In between the shooting, Flusser would write the next section of the script.
It was essentially a two-person shoot: Alex Young did the camerawork; Flusser recorded the sound. The editing—done by Flusser and Young—took three years. The two have been friends since they were seven years old, and lived across the street from each other.
In the middle of making Bird Sanctuary, Flusser discovered the slow, unsettling films of Andrei Tarkovsky, which had a transformative effect. “I still think of his films every day,” he says.
From the beginning, the plan was to make a three-part film, the first in bright, saturated color, the second part in desaturated color, the third section black-and-white. The Wizard of Oz famously begins in black-and-white and changes to color when Dorothy reaches the Land of Oz, but I can’t think of a film with the opposite trajectory.
The music for the film was composed by Andrew Reagan, whom Flusser met in college—the only non-New Paltz participant in the project.
Flusser and Young, plus a third collaborator, James Hyland, have already produced two feature films. The first one, 2018, also written and directed by Flusser, is named after the year he graduated high school. They are currently at work on a third, Anna by the Window, which takes place on one day in New York City. In it, Flusser will have his acting debut, as a tech nerd.
Their production company, Baggysuit, is named after a short comedy film they made about an actor in a baggy suit auditioning as the voice of a GPS app.
A group of friends making a film together over the course of years is a statement in itself. It’s the kind of shared heroism that anarchists call “mutual aid.” “I just want to continue hopefully throughout my whole life working with those same people,” Flusser proclaims. “They’re my close friends, and I love creating art with them. I cherish them.”
This article appears in April 2026.
