Jan 26 2009
Japan dolphin movie wins Sundance award
The documentary The Cove , which is, among many other things, about the annual massacre of 23,000 dolphins in Taiji, Japan (there’s a sequence of gruesome imagery included in Earthlings) has won the audience award at the Sundance festival which folded on Saturday evening.
Directed by Louie Psihoyos, widely regarded as one of the top photographers in the world, the film has been tipped by the Hollywood Reporter as a possible contender for the 2009 documentary Oscar. It does sound riveting: In the 1960’s, Richard O’Barry was the world’s leading authority on dolphin training, working on the set of the popular television program Flipper. Day in and day out, O’Barry kept the dolphins working and television audiences smiling. But one day, that all came to a tragic end and made Barry turn against the billion-dollar dolphin captivity industry. So, Psihoyos, O’Barry and an elite team of activists, filmmakers and freedivers embarked on a covert mission to penetrate a hidden cove in Japan, “shining light on a dark and deadly secret. The mysteries they uncovered were only the tip of the iceberg.”
I’m all for mixing in elements of a thriller to widen the exposure of a documentary film and the stills do give the impression that the photography is stunning. I have a hunch this film is going to be BIG! Who knows, this may be the beginning of the end of the horrible, criminal slaughter of dolphins in Japan.
Interesting - I’ll take a look and see if I can find that film.