Blackfish

[Catherina]

A mesmerizing psychological thriller with a killer whale at its centre, Blackfish is the first film since Grizzly Man to show how nature can get revenge on man when pushed to its limits. – film’s website

February 24, 2010, the orca Tilikum killed trainer Dawn Brancheau at Seaworld Orlando, and this was the third person he killed. Why is he still being used in shows? More importantly, why is he even in captivity at all? I could hardly watch the trailer it’s all so horrific, but it is a story that has to be told.

Blackfish tells the story of Tilikum, a performing killer whale that killed several people while in captivity. Along the way, director-producer Gabriela Cowperthwaite compiles shocking footage and emotional interviews to explore the creature’s extraordinary nature, the species’ cruel treatment in captivity, the lives and losses of the trainers and the pressures brought to bear by the mulit-billion dollar sea-park industry.

This emotionally wrenching, tautly structured story challenges us to consider our relationship to nature and reveals how little we humans have learned from these highly intelligent and enormously sentient fellow mammals.

Cowperthwaite was moved to make this documentary film after reading Outside’s The Killer in the Pool.

Our friend David Neiwert warns that if you want to see this movie, you better see it soon, Seaworld may very well get it pulled from theaters. He quotes the New York Times.

In an unusual pre-emptive strike on the documentary “Blackfish,” set for release on Friday in New York and Los Angeles by Magnolia Pictures, SeaWorld Entertainment startled the film world last weekend by sending a detailed critique of the movie to about 50 critics who were presumably about to review it. It was among the first steps in an aggressive public pushback against the film, which makes the case, sometimes with disturbing film, that orca whales in captivity suffer physical and mental distress because of confinement.

Neiwert also reminds us who the owners of Seaworld are:

And let’s not forget just who those owners are: None other than our right-wing friends at the Blackstone Group, well noted for their attempts in cahoots with the Koch Brothers to astroturf such campaigns as “Social Security reform”, and whose CEO notably compared President Obama to Hitler for having the audacity to raise taxes on him and his fellow 1 percenters.

...

http://my.firedoglake.com/elliott/2013/07/21/blackfish-the-movie/

[tblue]

1. Did you see The Cove?

Heartbreaking what is done to dolphins, and it all starts with Seaworld and the like. Thank you, dear Catherina. I'll try to get my hands on this movie if it doesn't make it to a theater where I can see it.

[Catherina]

3. Yes. I cried my eyes out. I can already tell this one is going to enrage me

but I'm glad it's been made. More people need to think about these things and resist this suffering, this exploitation for profit.

[zebonaut]

2. Animal Abuse; in this case by Corporations....

and nobody should tolerate animal abuse

[Catherina]

4. What a heartless practice. The trailer was hard enough to watch.

How do those people sleep at night?

[SkyDaddy7]

5. If the makers of this movie really want...

to make a difference then release the movie on the internet so hundreds millions of people will see it!!!

Releasing it in two cities might actually reach 10, 20,30 thousand people...SAD!!!

I sense this is more about making a profit in the theater than it is about changing attitudes.

[Beringia]

6. kick

[NYC_SKP]

7. Recommended. (nt)