The director of The Cove said yesterday that a decision by a US military base in Japan to ban the Oscar-winning film on dolphin killings and protests at the local distributor’s office won’t silence the film’s message on saving dolphins.
The Cove documents the bloody bludgeoning of dolphins by fishermen in the western seaside Japanese town of Taiji, where some dolphins are captured and sold to aquariums while others are killed for their meat. The film has set off a flurry of debate, especially after it won best documentary at this year’s Academy Awards.
The Japanese government is adamant that whaling and dolphin hunts must continue for research and cultural purposes, but most Japanese have never eaten whale or dolphin, and are shocked to see the slaughter.
The US Air Force Yokota Air Base, west of Tokyo, decided last week to cancel the screening at its on-base theater to be “sensitive to local political and cultural concerns,” base spokesperson Mitsuru Takahashi said.
The Cove director Louie Psihoyos said he will give away 100 DVDs of the movie to people at the base so they can see it.
“The military is facing a lot of pressure by our government to make nice of the Japanese,” he told reporters by telephone from Boulder, Colorado. “We are going to win this battle, with or without the US military.”
The film has not yet opened in Japan, except at a festival and small screenings, and is set to be shown at theaters in June. The faces of the fishermen and many other people in the film are blurred out to protect their privacy.
In recent weeks, dozens of nationalist protesters with loudspeakers have shown up at the distributor’s downtown Tokyo office demanding the film not be shown. Some theaters may choose not to show the film simply to avoid trouble.
Psihoyos, executive director of the Oceanic Preservation Society, a nonprofit for protecting the environment, said he was hopeful Japanese will be interested in what he said was a warning in his movie about the health risks of eating dolphin meat, which has mercury contamination levels higher than fish.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS