“Stuffed” won’t wrest the title of cinema’s most famous taxidermist from Norman Bates, but this documentary isn’t headed for as ghoulish a destination as the Bates Motel. Rather, the movie, directed by Erin Derham , sets out to explore the creative side of taxidermy, positioning the discipline as combining the eye of an artist with the scientific impulses of a naturalist, to paraphrase Travis C. de Villiers , one of the subjects.

We meet taxidermists like Allis Markham , who left a marketing job to start her own studio after a side education at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. The idea that taxidermy can be a form of archiving — a way of recording the poses of vanishing species — resurfaces throughout the film.