Watch The Gripping BLACKFISH Trailer

“It is known that they have great memory and even after many years they will always remember the human being who has tried to harm them” – ORCA, 1977

Finally. The massive charade that Sea World has been carrying on for decades is exposed in the new documentary and official selection at Sundance, BLACKFISH. I have been railing for years about how wrong it is for killer whales to be kept, not only in captivity, but in glorified concrete bathtubs like the ones they are forced to live in at Sea World marine entertainment parks in Orlando, San Diego, and San Antonio. Finally. Anyone who has ever thought that this is an acceptable way to treat animals that were designed by nature to migrate thousands of miles in the open ocean and hunt for food can hear firsthand from experts, employees and trainers at Sea World.

Many of us have experienced the excitement and awe of watching 8,000-pound orcas, or “killer whales,” soar out of the water and fly through the air at sea parks, as if in perfect harmony with their trainers. Yet, in our contemporary lore this mighty black-and-white mammal is like a two-faced Janus—beloved as a majestic, friendly giant yet infamous for its capacity to kill viciously. Blackfish unravels the complexities of this dichotomy, employing the story of notorious performing whale Tilikum, who—unlike any orca in the wild—has taken the lives of several people while in captivity. So what exactly went wrong?

Shocking, never-before-seen footage and riveting interviews with trainers and experts manifest the orca’s extraordinary nature, the species’ cruel treatment in captivity over the last four decades, and the growing disillusionment of workers who were misled and endangered by the highly profitable 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.

Watch the trailer for the documentary BLACKFISH.

Screenings will begin in the UK and Ireland on July 26th. BLACKFISH opens in US theaters July 19th.

The documentary will show at the AFI Docs Film Festival on June 21 and 22. http://afi.com/afidocs/films/blackfish.aspx#.Ua5MjUCG2Sp

Here’s the director’s statement:

“In the summer of 2010, Dawn Brancheau, a reknowned SeaWorld trainer, was killed by Tilikum, a 12,000-pound orca. I remember fragments: something about a ponytail, something about her slipping and falling, something about how this almost never happens because in these parks, the animals are happy and the trainers are safe.

But something wasn’t right. Why would a highly intelligent animal attack its trainer – in effect, bite the hand that feeds it? I set out to understand this incident not as an activist, but as a mother (who had just taken her kids to SeaWorld) and as a documentary filmmaker (who can’t let sleeping dogs lie).

I brought Manny Oteyza aboard as the film’s producer and he soon became my right arm. I spoke to Tim Zimmermann, who wrote a phenomenal article about the incident for Outside Magazine, and asked him to be Blackfish’s associate producer. I wrote a treatment and we were funded three months later by first-time executive producers Judy Bart and Erica Kahn. We worked with cinematographers Jon Ingalls and Chris Towey with whom both Manny and I have had a shorthand for decades, and we set out to tell a story. What story? At that point, I hadn’t the foggiest clue.

I went about my research respectfully. I strived to give every person involved a chance to talk (even if they declined.. repeatedly). I wasn’t setting out to produce an exposé, but rather a film where every perspective would be presented to achieve a greater understanding of animals and their human caretakers.

Thus began a journey of shock and discovery.

Blackfish is my second feature documentary and my first one at Sundance. I can’t say this was an easy film to make. There were nightmares, autopsy reports, sobbing interviewees, and miserable animals. But as I moved forward, I knew that in telling the story I was telling the truth. And in telling the truth, I had to show this billion dollar industry for what it was.

I hope you like the film. I don’t know if it will change the way you feel about animals in entertainment parks – I didn’t intend for it to do so. I do hope it gives you the tools to articulate how you feel about animals, our relationship with them, and what we want to teach our children about it.

Finally, the filmmaker in me also hopes that you will feel the same shock and discovery that I did over the two years of bringing Blackfish to fruition.”

– Gabriela Cowperthwaite

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