Sunday, November 21, 2010

Documentary "The Cove"


Today I want to recommend a documentary film we have just bought for our school library, The Cove.

The advantage of borrowing it is that you can play the video with the audio in English and the subtitles in Spanish to comprehend the full meaning of the story. Nevertheless, I don´t think it is a difficult film to follow since the images are quite clear and once you recognise some words, I bet you won´t have any problems with the general meaning of the story. Here´s some vocabulary you should make sure you understand: mercury poisoning, slaughter, cove, international captivity trade, pest control.

Read the following information about the film as well, that way you´ll be ready to understand the actions and the sequence of events:

The Cove begins in Taiji, Japan. There is where former(=in the past) dolphin trainer Ric O’Barry is searching for redemption; in the 1960s, it was O’Barry who captured and trained the five dolphins who played the title character in the TV series “Flipper.” When one of the dolphins died in his arms, he realised he had just started something terrible: dolphin captivity.
Ric discovered that the fishermen of Taiji carry out a terrible hunt in a remote cove in the area, surrounded by barbed wire and “Keep Out” signs, under cover of night.
First, trainers of sea aquariums from all over the world choose dolphins for their shows - a multi-billion dollar dolphin entertainment industry. Then, the remaining dolphins are slaughtered for their meat, mercury-poisoned meat which is very often sold as whale meat. What they do is so horrifying — and the consequences are so dangerous to human health — they do their best to stop anyone from seeing it.
When Ric O´Barry told the Oceanic Preservation Society about all this, they decided to film this Oscar-winning feature documentary. And this is the result: a provocative mix of investigative journalism, eco-adventure and sometimes beautiful and other times chilling imagery.



Inspired by this documentary, stars from film, TV and music got together to help save Japan's dolphins. You can also help by spreading the word out; if you want to take futher action, click here

2 comments:

  1. Sara Pardo Arza 1ºE08 December, 2010

    Rosa, I have a problem with the video and I couldn´t see it!

    But I read the information of the documentary and I think that it´s necessary to avoid the capture of differents kinds of animals because they are alive like us and isn´t a human behaviour to kill them or to torture them.
    Also I saw the video where famous people talk about dolphins. They say that dolphins are very intelligent animals and they can understand us(and other characteristics) but they emphasize that dolphins usually become to save lifes. For this reason it´s more unfair that they belong to the captivity.

    I don´t understand how the men are able to carry out a terrible hunt like in Taiji.
    We are in time of stopping it, we mustn´t lose the hope!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sara, I´m sorry you couldn´t see the video; is it a problem with your computer or with my link? If you are really interested in it, you can borrow the DVD from the school library.

    ReplyDelete

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