Louie Psihoyos, director of The Cove film, is in Japan this week at the Tokyo International Film Festival for the first-ever screening of The Cove in Japan. By traveling to Japan to screen The Cove he courageously risked arrest and violence from Japanese authorities and fishermen who are featured in The Cove.
Read Louie's fascinating & well-written blog post, published today, about his adventures in Japan this week:
>> The Cove blog: October 21, 2009
Photo: World champion freediver Mandy dives with whales in The Cove.Some quotes from Louie in Japan this week:
"It was important to me to be there to introduce the film, and stand up for my clients: the dolphins and porpoises and whales that have very few human voices to defend them."
"Going into Tokyo was the quickest way to draw attention to the problem, and getting arrested - while being no fun - would be the equivalent of walking into the dragon's lair."
"Mr Komatsu, who wrote the definitive book on the Japanese defense of whaling had his head between his knees and was frantically rubbing his temples as if trying to poltergeist a migraine. If everybody else around him [at the film screening] wasn't in shock, I think they would have gotten him a doctor."
"As much as we all feel that the film is about animal rights, the way to win the argument is through human rights. Dolphin meat is toxic, all of it. The meat violates Japanese Health laws... it is a human right to have food that is not classified as a poison by health laws but advertised as nutrition by the Far Seas Fisheries agency."
"Whale watching has earned far more money than whale killing has ever made."
...The Cove & director Louie Psihoyos, inspiring examples -right now- of film as activism!
See The Cove at Save The Waves Film Festival on November 13 in San Francisco with very special guest Captain Paul Watson:
