Others

Blackfish is a 2013 American documentary film directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite. It concerns Tilikum, an orca held by SeaWorld and the controversy over captive killer whales. The film premiered at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival on January 19, 2013, and was picked up by Magnolia Pictures and CNN Films for wider release. It was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Documentary.

The documentary concerns the captivity of Tilikum, an orca involved in the deaths of three individuals, and the consequences of keeping orcas in captivity. The coverage of Tilikum includes his capture in 1983 off the coast of Iceland and his purported harassment by fellow captive orcas at Sealand of the Pacific. Cowperthwaite argues these incidents contributed to the orca’s aggression. The film includes a testimonial from Lori Marino, director of science with the Nonhuman Rights Project. Cowperthwaite also focuses on SeaWorld’s claims that lifespans of orcas in captivity are comparable to those in the wild, typically 30 years for males and 50 years for females, a claim the film argues is false. Other people interviewed include former SeaWorld trainers, such as John Hargrove, who describe their experiences with Tilikum and other captive whales.

The documentary reports that the whales have experienced extreme stress when their offspring were captured in the wild or when separated after breeding at water parks. The film features footage of attacks on trainers by Tilikum and other captive whales as well as interviews with witnesses.

Acclaimed filmmaker Werner Herzog travels to Antarctica, where he finds a desolate, beautiful landscape, largely untouched by human hands, and a group of truly unique people who risk their lives to study it. Centered at McMurdo Station, the United States’ largest Antarctic research center, Herzog explores the minds of the scientists willing to abandon civilization and endure volatile conditions to learn more about the continent’s wildlife and awe-inspiring natural wonders.

March of the Penguins (French La Marche de l’empereur) is a 2005 French feature-length nature documentary directed and co-written by Luc Jacquet, and co-produced by Bonne Pioche and the National Geographic Society. The documentary depicts the yearly journey of the emperor penguins of Antarctica. In autumn, all the penguins of breeding age (five years old and over) leave the ocean, their normal habitat, to walk inland to their ancestral breeding grounds. There, the penguins participate in a courtship that, if successful, results in the hatching of a chick. For the chick to survive, both parents must make multiple arduous journeys between the ocean and the breeding grounds over the ensuing months.

It took one year for the two isolated cinematographers Laurent Chalet and Jérôme Maison to shoot the documentary, which was shot around the French scientific base of Dumont d’Urville in Adélie Land.

The documentary won the 2006 Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Oceans (French: Océans) is a 2009 French nature documentary film directed, produced, co-written, and narrated by Jacques Perrin, with Jacques Cluzaud as co-director. The film explores the marine species of Earth’s five oceans and reflects on the negative aspects of human activity on the environment, with Perrin (Pierce Brosnan in English) providing narration.

Budgeted at around $80 million, it was filmed in over 50 different places and took four years to film. In North America, the film was distributed by Disney, who cut 20 minutes mostly depicting violent massacres of sea animals (recreated through visual effects) in order to aim it at a younger audience.

2001 ‘Origine océan – 4 milliards d’années sous les mers’ Directed by Gérald Calderon
A documentary that explores the natural world of the sea, from the single-celled organism to more complex forms of life, OCEAN ORIGINS was originally filmed in the IMAX large format, which adds a crispness and clarity to the images. This documentary film seeks to examine the process of evolution by looking at the many creatures of the sea that can illustrate the way multi-cellular life emerged over the course of four billion years. OCEAN ORIGINS is a creative film that uses fascinating documentary footage to look at scientific theories and principles in an interesting manner.