Tag: HAR: Animal Protection
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Free Willy. Dir. Simon Wincer. Warner Bros. Family Entertainment. 1993.
Famed for its CGI clip of a killer whale jumping over a wall into freedom, family film Free Willy follows a young boy’s transformation from “street kid” to animal activist after forming a bond with hostile orca Willy. 12 year old Jesse’s bond enables him to train and care for the three ton orca, which several trainers…
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Grizzly Man. Dir. Werner Herzog. Lions Gate Films. 2005.
Grizzly Man, Dir. Werner Herzog, (2005). Grizzly Man, directed by Werner Herzog, presents a mixture of actual footage collected from Timothy Treadwell’s archive as well as interviews with his friends and family, conducted by Herzog. Treadwell’s relationship with the Bears and other wildlife is problematic as although he champions conservation he is also arguably interfering…
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Milking the Rhino. Dir. David E. Simpson. Kartemquin Films. 2009.
David E. Simpson’s 2009 documentary Milking the Rhino is a groundbreaking, astonishing story of two cattle farming cultures, the Maasai of Kenya and Ovahimba of Namibia, caught between trying to conserve their ancient traditions amid the growing pressure of modern wildlife conservation. They represent the largely unseen inhabitants of the wildlife documentary, the conveniently ignored…
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The Future. Dir. Miranda July. Roadside Attractions. 2011.
The scene begins with Paw-Paw the cat waiting to be picked up from the adoption centre, asking: “How long is 30 days?” It is not clear who this question is directed at, but since there is no one else within the scene we can only assume that these are Paw-Paw’s internal thoughts. The only part…
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Born Free. Dir. James Hill. Columbia Pictures. 1966.
Born Free deals with the contradictory question of how to demonstrate the behaviour of a wild animal in a tame, domestic environment. Through an exploration of the binaries between wild and tame, domestic and barbarous, Elsa’s hamartia is revealed; she is too wild to be a tame pet, but too tame to be a wild…
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Touching Wild Horses. Dir. Eleanore Lindo. Chesler/Perlmutter Productions. 2002.
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The Whale. Dir. Suzanne Chisholm & Michael Parfit. Kinosmith & Paladin. 2011.
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Polar Bears: A Summer Odyssey. Dir. Adam Ravetch and Sarah Robertson. Universal Pictures. 2012.
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All The Little Animals. Dir. Jeremy Thomas. Lionsgate. 1999.
Bobby Platt is twenty-four with learning difficulties due to a car accident from his childhood which he refers to as “the most important thing about me”. Bobby’s stepfather, “The Fat” is the archetypal bully: aggressive and unsympathetic even at the death of Bobby’s mother. After her funeral The Fat instructs Bobby to sign over the…
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Blackfish. Dir. Gabriela Cowperthwaite. Magnolia Pictures. 2013.
Blackfish is a documentary which focuses on the danger of keeping killer whales in captivity. The documentary film argues that this danger affects, not just the human trainers of these highly intelligent animals, but also the marine creatures themselves. Director Gabriela Cowperthwaite focuses on one whale in particular; Tilikum a 6 ton bull orca, who…