We can apparently add Louie Psihoyos’s documentary The Coveto our list of Movies That Really Made a Difference. The secret-camera-employed expose on the slaughter of dolphins in Taiji, Japan, is getting credit, at least in part, with a stoppage of the dolphin killing, the season for which would have begun this week.
Dolphin activist and trainer Richard O’Barry, who appears in Psihoyos’ film, showed up to protest as usual accompanied by a group of international journalists and media crews, only to find the titular location void of fishermen.
He immediately reported his happy discovery to Take Part, writing, “it is a good day for the dolphins. And for me personally, as the police only wanted to talk with me, not arrest me!”
While this is certainly good news, it’s also not surprising that a documentary dealing with the killing of animals would be more successful in its goal than the countless films raising awareness of human genocides and poverty.
Of course, this is a sign that documentary as activism can make a difference, so I don’t mean to be cynical. I honestly hope that The Cove will be made an example and that other films inspire similar change.
Check out what other film bloggers are saying about The Cove’s success after the jump:
It’s already been called the most important civil rights film of the decade, but only time will tell if Milk has any real impact on the gay marriage issue or any other related civil rights matter. Obviously the film, which is set thirty years in the past, can be appropriated by the campaign to overturn Proposition 8, but if that campaign is successful, it will be difficult to prove with certainty Milk contributed to the end result.
The Birth of a Nation may have inspired a reformation of the Ku Klux Klan and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner may have opened some minds to wider acceptance of interracial marriage (which had just recently been legalized). However, as Time magazine reported earlier this year, it’s quite rare for cinema to really change the world. A movie like Philadelphia easily gets moviegoers thinking about AIDS and discrimination, for instance, and Sicko exposes some of the supposed benefits of universal health care, yet most of these kinds of message films preach primarily to the choir.
But at least five films have made an actual difference, either on a local or national level. Will Milk join the small group of movies detailed below? …Read more
The 30-minute Barack Obama infomerical just ended on the East Coast, and since it was partially directed by An Inconvenient Truth Oscar winner Davis Guggenheim, it makes total sense for us to write about it on a movie blog! Spoilers after the jump!
Just when I thought I had a grasp of what kind of movies are sure to get a sequel or two, and which ones won’t, all my assumptions are being turned upside down. Spider Man? Sure. Pirates? Of course. But a sequel to An Inconvenient Truth? And one for Hal Hartly’s Henry Fool (which, incidentally is one of my favorite films)? Go figure.
Yes, it appears to be true. We’re going to be treated to a sequel of an informative (if slightly slow) documentary about global warming, and another for a high quality film with very little action and rather unpleasant characters. For An Inconvenient Truth Part 2 (I know, it gets your heart beating faster, doesn’t it?), director Davis Guggenheim is scheduled to meet with Paramount next week, so it’s too soon for details. (Will the original film’s star, Al Gore, agree to a sequel? The suspense…)
For the Henry Fool sequel, Hartly made Fay Grim, which picks up seven years later and focuses on the Parker Posey character by the same name. Somehow, Hartly manages to take a movie based entirely in a Queens neighborhood, and move its sequel to Paris, where the CIA also plays a role. Not your typical sequel (but I can’t wait to see it–check out the trailer at Spout).
So do these new developments tell us anything about the future of the sequel? Probably not. Some of the best documentary sequels (although most people don’t call them that) have been around for a while–director Michael Apted’s Up Series (28 Up, 35 Up, etc.), which he began filming in 1963. (Apted began chronicling the lives of 14 seven year olds that year, following up with “sequels” every seven years after.) It’s a brilliant series, but it hasn’t shifted the way most studios think about doing sequels. Neither did Smoke or its sequel (of sorts) Blue in the Face, another example of an atypical movie sequel set. No, it seems the decision to make your average sequel is generally all about what made a lot of money the first time around and might have enough buzz surrounding it to sustain another go. Wouldn’t it be great if the decision to create a sequel was based on the story, and whether it was worthy of another go?
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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