The Bay

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Movie
German title The Bay
Original title The Cove
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 2009
length 90 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director Louie Psihoyos
script Marc Monroe
production Fisher Stevens ,
Paula DuPré Pesman
music Joshua Ralph
camera Brook Aitken
cut Geoffrey Richman
occupation

The Cove (Original Title: The Cove ) is an Oscar-winning documentary from 2009 directed by Louie Psihoyos and starring animal rights activist Richard O'Barry .

action

The filmmakers document how around 2,000 dolphins, mainly bottlenose dolphins , are regularly driven into a bay ( 33 ° 35 ′ 56 ″  N , 135 ° 56 ′ 47 ″  E ) in the Japanese coastal town of Taiji . Barbed wire and security guards are sealed off. The most beautiful animals are separated and then sold to dolphinariums all over the world. Taiji is the world's largest seller of dolphins to marine parks and dolphinariums. The remaining animals are killed. The film made this event available to a broad public for the first time. According to the filmmakers, around 23,000 dolphins are killed each year in Japan.

In the 1960s, Richard O'Barry was a dolphin trainer for the television series Flipper . Five different animals played the pinball role, and O'Barry caught each animal himself. A decisive experience for him was when the female dolphin Cathy (one of the pinball actors) committed "suicide" and died in his arms. He also recognized that dolphins are aware of their existence, recognize each other on TV recordings and in the mirror and can differentiate themselves from other conspecifics. Since 1970 he has been fighting for the protection of animals and against dolphinariums.

Since dolphins are cetaceas (whales), according to the film, they should actually be protected by the International Whaling Commission (IWC), but some member states ignored the international agreement. They exclude smaller whale species such as dolphins from fishing for commercial reasons. Japan is trying to have the whaling ban lifted entirely by paying smaller countries to join the IWC and vote for Japan. After Dominica withdrew from the IWC, Japan was able to win over Cambodia , Ecuador , Eritrea , Guinea-Bissau , Kiribati , Laos and the Marshall Islands for its purposes.

Dolphin fishermen in Japan claim that dolphin hunting and consumption of dolphin meat is a long tradition. But O'Barry explains that the type of hunt (driven hunt for the sound-sensitive animals through noise) only began on the basis of more recent scientific findings and could not have a tradition. In addition, the majority in Japan neither eat dolphin meat, nor have anyone ever heard of dolphins being hunted in Japan.

In Japan, the recommended maximum level of mercury in seafood is 0.4 ppm , while values ​​of 2000 ppm have been measured in dolphin meat. The dolphin meat is also said to be deliberately falsely declared as whale meat, without the government doing anything about it. As early as 1956, when Minamata disease occurred, the mercury poisoning that caused it was said to have been covered up by the Japanese government.

Work on the film is said to have been hindered by the local authorities, the police and fishermen, and the filmmakers were threatened. Access was gained with the help of diving and surfing trips as well as covert actions. Two apnea divers , night vision devices as well as cameras and underwater microphones hidden in artificial stones were used to make the recordings unnoticed.

background

Dolphinariums and amusement parks all over the world pay up to 150,000 euros for a dolphin. The booming dolphinarium industry provides financial incentives to keep the hunt going in Taiji.

Singer Sting and actor Pierce Brosnan gave praise and a pledge of support for the fight against the hunt for dolphins . Netscape founder Jim Clark supported the production of the film as executive producer with $ 2.5 million.

The film was released in German cinemas on October 22, 2009, and was released on DVD and Blu-Ray on March 11, 2010. When it was released in Japan, the first commercial performance in Tokyo had to take place under police protection, and nationalists have also prevented performances on several occasions. After the protests subsided, the film was shown in Japanese cinemas with "astonishing success".

On German television, Die Bucht was broadcast on n-tv on March 5, 2012 and on RTL Nitro on May 17, 2012 .

The toxicologist Tetsuya Endō, interviewed in the film regarding the mercury contamination of dolphin meat, sued the Japanese distributor for the removal of his interview and for damages because his statements were taken out of context or cut out and he had not consented to any publication.

In 2010, at the request of the Taiji City Council , the National Institute for Minamata Disease, part of the Ministry of the Environment , examined a third of the population for methylmercury contamination. This was more than four times as high as for people outside of Taiji, and 43 people were above the 50 ppm limit assumed by the WHO, above which mercury poisoning occurs. Nevertheless, mercury diseases could not be detected in any of the residents.

Reviews

“'The Bay - The Cove' by Louie Psihoyos is one of the most emotional tension films of recent times. [...] In the bay the water is finally colored red by the blood of the massacred animals. Your meat goes on sale. Often declared as whale meat. But this is by no means harmless, because the fish are contaminated with heavy metals such as mercury, lead, cadmium and pharmaceutical poisons. Which ultimately strikes back to people, because they are at the end of the food chain. "

“'Eco-Thriller' is the word that is often used, and 'The Bay' actually has a form that comes astonishingly close to a crime thriller. After the team did not make any progress with the official research, the covert investigations began - on a scale that would do any espionage ring credit: divers are flown in, night break-ins are undertaken, remote-controlled cameras are hidden, and all of this is meticulously filmed and commented on. "

- Doris Kuhn : Süddeutsche Zeitung

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. a b Dolphin catching Taiji / Japan , project whale protection campaigns
  2. Fishing in Japan: Bloody hunt for dolphins , Süddeutsche Zeitung of October 13, 2008
  3. ^ Oscar documentary "The Cove": Japanese cinemas kill dolphin hunt film , Spiegel Online from June 17, 2010
  4. Oscar film creates public: Next dolphin blood in "the bay" , the daily newspaper of September 2, 2010
  5. Program information : Oscar-winning documentary "The Bay" , press release n-tv from February 29, 2012
  6. Greenday on RTL NITRO , IP Germany from May 9, 2012
  7. Dolphin documentary sparks lawsuit. In: CBC News. December 8, 2010, accessed August 7, 2013 .
  8. Japanese Professor Denounces “The Cove”. (No longer available online.) In: Japan Probe. December 5, 2010, archived from the original on April 16, 2014 ; accessed on August 7, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.japanprobe.com
  9. Minoru Matsutani: Taiji locals test high for mercury. In: The Japan Times. May 10, 2010, accessed August 7, 2013 .
  10. ^ "The Bay" , Deutschlandradio Kultur, October 21, 2009
  11. ^ The Bay: Flipper in Hell , Süddeutsche Zeitung of October 22, 2009