The Cove (2009)
Documentary, Biography, Crime |.
The Cove is a documentary film directed by Louie Psihoyos which analyzes and questions dolphin hunting practices in Japan. It was awarded the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature in 2010. The film is a call to action to halt mass dolphin kills and captures, change Japanese fishing practices, and to inform and educate the public about captivity and the risks, and increasing hazard, of mercury poisoning from dolphin meat. The film is told from an ocean conservationist’s point of view.
The film highlights the fact that the number of dolphins killed in the Taiji dolphin drive hunting is several times greater than the number of whales killed in the Antarctic, and asserts that 23,000 dolphins and porpoises are killed in Japan every year by the country’s whaling industry. The migrating dolphins are herded into a cove where they are netted off, the young and pretty are then captured to be sold to the oceanariums and dolphinariums around the world, the rest are brutally slaughtered. The film argues that dolphin hunting as practiced in Japan is unnecessary and cruel.
The film follows former dolphin trainer and activist Ric O’Barry’s quest to document the dolphin hunting operations in Taiji, Wakayama, Japan. In the 1960s, O’Barry helped capture and train the five wild dolphins who shared the role of “Flipper” in the hit television series of the same name. The show, very popular, fueled widespread public adoration of dolphins, influencing the development of marine parks that included dolphins in their attractions. After one of the dolphins, in O’Barry’s opinion, committed a form of suicide in his arms by closing her blowhole voluntarily in order to suffocate, O’Barry came to see the dolphin’s captivity and the dolphin capture industry as a curse, not a blessing. Days later, he was arrested off the island of Bimini, attempting to cut a hole in the sea pen in order to set free a captured dolphin…
Director: Louie Psihoyos
Writer: Mark Monroe
Stars: Richard O’Barry, Louie Psihoyos, Hardy Jones, Michael Illiff, Joji Morishita, Ian Campbell, Paul Watson
►Cast:
Richard O’Barry | … | Self |
Louie Psihoyos | … | Self |
Hardy Jones | … | Self |
Michael Illiff | … | Self |
Joji Morishita | … | Self |
Ian Campbell | … | Self |
Paul Watson | … | Self |
Doug DeMaster | … | Self |
Dave Rastovich | … | Self / Surfer |
Charles Hambleton | … | Self |
Hayato Sakurai | … | Self |
Kazutaka Sangen | … | Self |
Simon Hutchins | … | Self |
Joe Chisholm | … | Self |
Mandy-Rae Cruikshank | … | Self / Freediver |
Kirk Krack | … | Self / Freediver |
Roger Payne | … | Self |
Hideki Moronuki | … | Self |
Dan Goodman | … | Self |
Tetsuya Endo | … | Self |
C. Scott Baker | … | Self |
Brook Aitken | … | Self |
John Potter | … | Self |
John Fuller | … | Self |
Atherton Martin | … | Self |
Deborah Bassett | … | Surfer |
Steven Barilotti | … | Surfer |
Shannon Sol Carroll | … | Surfer |
Howie Cooke | … | Surfer |
James Cox | … | Surfer |
Hannah Fraser | … | Surfer |
Peter Heller | … | Surfer |
Justin Krumb | … | Surfer |
Chris Lane | … | Surfer |
Andrew Lucas | … | Surfer |
Karlee Mackie | … | Surfer |
Owen J. Newcomb | … | Surfer |
Jeff Pantukhoff | … | Surfer |
Karina Petroni | … | Surfer |
James Pribham | … | Surfer |
Seamon | … | Surfer |
Kuni Takanami | … | Surfer |
Angie Davis | … | Surfer |
James Triglone | … | Surfer |
Lesley Vogel | … | Surfer |
Isabel Lucas | … | Self – Whateman Foundation / Save the Whales |
Hayden Panettiere | … | Self – Whateman Foundation / Save the Whales |
Greg ‘Moondog’ Mooney | … | Self |
Hans Peter Roth | … | Self |
Sources: imdb & wikipedia
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